O Fortune
by magicalyoyo
Summary: Otabek Altin was lucky. He always had been. He was, he reflected (with some bitterness), lucky in the same way that a rabbit foot was lucky – it never did the rabbit any good.
1. One For Sorrow

"C'mon, Beks, do your thing," JJ said, grinning. "I gotta keep my streak, man."

He held out the dice with a wink. The black paint had begun to rub off, leaving the nine and seven as incomplete connect-the-dots, constellations of chance. Yellowed plastic glinted in the light that poured over JJ's table, framing the nicks and smudges in reflected fluorescence.

His lucky dice, he called them.

"I'm playing against you," Otabek objected mildly. "And this is backgammon."

"So?" JJ shrugged. "You never win anyway."

 _I do with other people,_ Otabek thought. For a moment, he hated the brittle cockiness of JJ's smirk, the way he reached for victory like no one else could want it – could need it – like he did.

Because, as he'd noted, Otabek never won.

For a moment, Otabek hated the brittle cockiness of JJ's smirk, the way he reached for victory like no one else could want it – could need it – like he did.

Isabella Yang leaned forward, snagging JJ's bottle of sparkling water.

"JJ, aren't you supposed to ask _me_ to do that?" She pouted playfully and took a sip, leaving a smear of scarlet where her mouth had brushed the plastic. In a moment, Otabek knew, Isabella would slip away to check her makeup. He wondered if JJ noticed how she wore her confident smile the same way she applied her eyeliner, sharp and hard and carefully monitored for perfection.

"Nah, Belle, Beks is magic," replied JJ, rolling the dice between his fingers. "He wishes you good luck, you get good luck."

She giggled, and Otabek wondered if Isabella could see the flash of panic that lit JJ's blue eyes like lightning whenever he began to lose.

"You don't believe me?"

"I don't believe in luck," she said with a shrug, and finished off the water. "Be right back."

She slipped into the bathroom with her purse. JJ turned back to Otabek.

"Please?" JJ whispered, flicking his eyes in the direction Isabella had gone. "Just this once."

New girlfriend, new season, same JJ, desperate to prove himself the king.

Same Otabek, too: friendly competition was always the friendliest when one didn't fear defeat.

He blew on the dice, more of a sigh than a breath, and JJ beamed at him.

"You're the best, Beks," he said as Isabella emerged with a fresh shine to her lips. "Let's do this-"

"JJ, don't you dare," Otabek grumbled, holding back a quiet laugh.

"-JJ style!"

Fifteen minutes later, Otabek lost, and JJ clapped him on the shoulder.

"Good game, yeah?"

"Yeah," Otabek agreed. It had been close. "I'm off for the night. See you at the rink tomorrow."

 **:: :: ::**

Otabek Altin was lucky. He always had been.

He was, he reflected (with some bitterness), lucky in the same way that a rabbit foot was lucky – it never did the rabbit any good.

" _Ботам,"_ his mother told Otabek when he was a child, crying after another of his innumerable second-place victories, "if you believe it, of course it will seem true. Don't let it hold you back."

Otabek's father, when he was asked, was more contemplative.

"I don't know, Beka. It is what it is," he said quietly. "Just remember that winning is an achievement, but lifting up others is a blessing."

And so Otabek congratulated his sister when she scored the winning goal in their lunchtime soccer game, gave a thumbs-up to Rashid when his best friend aced each exam, and wondered to himself if he'd stumbled over his own subconscious while racing after the ball, marked the wrong answer on purpose at the last second.

He breathed a soft sigh of relief when he was assigned to a math lesson full of complete strangers, and beamed when the teacher informed his parents that his scores were the highest in the class. For a nine-year-old who had spent his life a hair's breadth from the top, winning felt like finding water in a desert after countless miles of shimmering mirages.

His friends weren't so happy.

"I don't get it," Rashid grumbled one afternoon, showing Otabek his homework. It was covered in red marks. "Do you think the teacher hates me or what?"

"Maybe it's just harder," Otabek suggested, pushing yesterday's quiz deeper into his own bag.

Rashid sighed glumly, shredding one corner of the paper into tiny scraps.

"He was copying off you," Otabek's sister Gulshat told him, rolling her eyes with all the certainty of her three years' seniority.

"He _wasn't_!" Otabek protested, glaring at her. "Besides, he did better than me."

The next time they had class together, Otabek's free time had been entirely consumed by skating, and Rashid had begun to hang out with another group of boys who spent their afternoons playing soccer and video games instead of carving solitary gashes into the ice rink. They nodded awkwardly at each other, old enough to know that something had changed in their friendship, but too young to understand exactly what.

Otabek sat in the corner and stared out the window, counting down the hours until he could get back to the ice, while Rashid and his new friends flicked spitwads at each other when the teacher wasn't looking.

"Guess that year was just a fluke," Rashid said in passing, flashing him a wry grin. "Let's hang out soon, yeah? Haven't seen you around."

 **:: :: ::**

It was hard leaving Almaty.

It was even harder for Otabek to admit that his country was both unwilling and unable to help him push out towards the furthest reaches of his talent and determination, as he watched the careers of young Russian and American athletes rise on the wings of scholarships and dedicated facilities.

At thirteen, he was brushing up against his first growth spurts, struggling with a coach who had neither the time nor experience to help him.

His family was well-off, but figure skating required as much from the bank as it did from his body. His father's mosque, with little fanfare and a few murmurs about _potential_ and _if this were Russia_ , raised enough money to fill in the gaps and send Otabek to St. Petersburg.

There, he met a human hurricane with green eyes. Yuri Plisetsky didn't seem to notice the waves crashing around him as he danced, the startled approval of their teacher or Otabek's own red-faced struggles as he tried to keep up with children two years younger.

Yuri would never need Otabek's luck. He carved out his future by himself, fighting a battle no one else could see.

 _I_ will _do that too,_ Otabek told himself, ignoring the burn of his muscles. _I can't do it like this, but I'll do it._

He moved to America, an ocean and a language farther from home, riding a meager scholarship that was offered on the off-chance of his success instead of the certainty of it. Otabek's skating – like his English - was more than passable but less than noteworthy when he resettled in Colorado Springs.

His social skills were rather less refined. His teachers described him as serious and, occasionally, shy, more focused on practice than play. Otabek wondered if he was choosing to avoid close friendships instead of merely ending up without them, and tried not to think too much about how his luck seemed to improve when he didn't share it.

Otabek felt his heart sink when he was introduced to his new roommate: Leo de la Iglesia was a year older than he was, with a soft smile and a softer voice, and he greeted Otabek (or, more accurately, Otabek's jetlag and the zombie-like form that carried it) with a lazy wave.

Leo was almost permanently hidden under huge headphones that only served to accentuate the bobble-headed proportions of teenage boys, stretched upward before their frames remembered to fill out, and they were friends from the moment Leo tugged the headphones from his floppy brown hair and offered them to Otabek.

 _I'm going to lose to you,_ Otabek thought, sinking into the music, but he thought that maybe, this time, it was worth it.

Between skating and school, their lives wove together. Leo showed Otabek how to tweak songs with a bit of software he'd downloaded _almost_ legally, and bobbed his hair through Otabek's first stumbling remixes when he found that working within the music was even better than listening to it. In return, Otabek taught Leo how to navigate the subway system in whatever city they landed in (without the backing of sponsorships, the commute between airports and hotels and competition venues was both inconvenient and pricey, and as a result, Otabek had learned public transportation like another language).

That summer, Leo got a boyfriend and Otabek got acne.

"Your double axel is really nice," Guang Hong murmured as they watched Leo tumble out of a spin, skittering across the ice like a baby deer. "Can you teach me?"

"Thanks," replied Otabek. He thought to himself that he had it easier than his friend – zits were covered up by makeup when he performed, but Leo's new two and a half inches of height could be neither hidden nor ignored. "Um, I can try."

"I just can't get it," Guang Hong continued, pouting. "Plisetsky did a quad sal in competition, did you hear?"

" _Yuri_ Plisetsky?" Otabek's mind flashed back to hard green eyes, tinted with a drop of blue and an ocean of determination. If any twelve-year-old was landing quads, it would be him. "He's still a novice."

"Russians," came the sighed reply. "They're crazy."

Without looking over, Otabek knew what Guang Hong was thinking, about if – _when_ – they fought their way into the senior division, Viktor Nikiforov would still be competing. Everyone wanted to skate against him, to pit themselves against the living legend, but even their overactive teenage egos had to admit they'd all be skating for silver while he was on the ice.

"Yeah," Otabek agreed, waving a sweating Leo over when the coach finally released him. "Russians."

Leo and Guang Hong left the rink hand in hand, jokingly wrinkling their noses about _practice stench_ and _sweat cooties_ , but Otabek caught the coach's eye and sat on a bench to wait for her.

Yuri Plisetsky would be entering juniors soon, and Otabek wanted to meet him there – not just as competitors, but fellow soldiers. 

It would feel a bit like victory, to have the little blond boy who hadn't given him a second glance in the ballet camp look at him, remember him, to say _look, I'm fighting too._

Otabek would need to be a lot better than he was.

He asked the coach for extra practice time, more drills, more supplementary exercises, and she tilted her head in thought.

"I have a friend who coaches in Montreal," she said finally, "at the CPA. He might be a better fit for you. Come talk to me tomorrow, if you're interested."

When Otabek got back to his room, he googled _club de patinage artistique_ and downloaded a course on Canadian French.


	2. Two For Mirth

Otabek waited at the baggage claim, trying not to think too hard about the fact that he'd lived in four countries in the previous three years. The travel-worn green suitcase making its way around the carousel was one of two things he still had from Almaty – his old clothes had been outgrown, electronics replaced, and small mementos lost or discarded as their sentiment faded. A suitcase, a ragged teddy bear, and an accent were what he had to remember home.

"So you're from Russia, huh?" One of his new rinkmates bobbed by Otabek's elbow, grinning and chatting. Otabek couldn't remember his name and didn't much care. "Big change, yeah?"

"I'm not Russian," Otabek replied flatly. He unclenched his jaw, which had begun to ache. "I'm from Kazakhstan. I've lived in America for the past year."

"But you speak Russian?" The boy's blue eyes sparkled, and Otabek wondered if the color came from the vast quantity of hot air that seemed to fill his head. "Did you learn it, or-"

"We speak Russian because of communism," he muttered through gritted teeth. It was too late to run through customs and jump back on the plane, Otabek told himself. "It's a national language."

Otabek pulled his suitcase from the belt, only to have it plucked out of his hands with a grin. (Did he ever _stop_ smiling? Didn't his teeth dry out?)

"I've got it."

"Nah, man, this is welcome to Canada, JJ style."

 _What was_ JJ, Otabek almost asked, then bit down on a snort. His airplane-addled mind had finally caught up, informing him that he was speaking to Jean-Jacques Leroy.

"Is this all?" JJ asked, hefting the suitcase slightly higher than was strictly necessary. His arms would probably be impressive in a couple more years, but at the moment he was showing off a sixteen-year-old's skinny frame. "Wow, you pack light."

"That's it," Otabek confirmed. The meager remainder of his possessions had already been shipped to his dorm, and if JJ wanted to carry his suitcase, he was welcome to it – Otabek's knees ached from skating, his shins ached from growing, and his head ached from Jean-Jacques Leroy.

At least he wouldn't have to give his luck to JJ, Otabek thought, climbing into the car. They wouldn't be friends.

 **:: :: ::**

The music pounded in time with Otabek's nascent headache, and he squinted against the bright light of his phone. Nearly three in the morning – on a school or training day, he'd be waking up in two hours, but as it was, he couldn't even use that as an excuse to leave the party.

" _Check moi l'es donc_ ," a girl yelled in his ear, gesturing across the crowded room. Otabek had no idea what she was saying, but looked over anyway, just in time to get a searing eyeful of some guy's attempt to strip and drink simultaneously. She screamed over the music, " _Tire une buche,_ Martin!"

Otabek nodded at her and slipped away, but there wasn't any open space in the crowd. Someone grabbed at his arm, trying to get him to dance, and lukewarm beer splashed onto his sleeve. He gagged on the stench of sweat and stale alcohol. It hadn't been so overwhelming earlier, when Otabek found himself with a laptop full of music and a free drink, but it was a different matter in front of the booming speakers.

His friend had vanished into the writhing mass of bodies. _He_ was having fun, at least. The metro was closed for the night. Otabek assessed his sobriety and decided that it wasn't a match for the night bus lines.

It was almost impossible to hear the staticky ring through his phone's old speaker. Otabek forced his way into the hallway and locked himself in the bathroom, ignoring several drunken protests.

"Salut?" JJ's voice was groggy, but it flooded Otabek with relief and guilt.

"It's Otabek," he replied, conscious of the slurred edges of his words. "I'm sorry, I'm, um, I'm at a party."

"Are you okay?"

"I don't know how to get home," admitted Otabek. His ears burned and his stomach twisted uncomfortably. "I can't find my friend."

"Give me the address, Beks," JJ said without hesitation. The rasp of sleep was audible even over the phone, muting his usual cheer. "I'll come get you."

"I don't know it." Otabek ran his fingers through his hair. He _wasn't_ scared, he told himself. He was just tipsy and tired. And nauseated. And, technically, lost. "I- I can ask someone, hold on."

"Just share your location. Open maps on your phone and text it to me."

"Right. Um." Otabek paused, trying to figure out if he should thank JJ or apologize for dragging him out of bed. The music echoed through the walls and drowned out his thoughts. "I-"

"I'm gonna start driving, Beks, I'll call you when I get there," JJ said, cutting him off. "Should be about twenty minutes. Make sure your phone's on vibrate in case you don't hear it over the music, yeah?"

"Okay. Yeah." Someone was hammering on the bathroom door, calling something slurred, urgent, and incomprehensibly French. "Thanks. See you."

He unlocked the door and crept out, trying not to make eye contact with the pair of girls slouched against the wall. They were both taller than he was, not that _that_ was particularly unusual, and looked completely at home. Well, one looked at home. Her friend just looked green as she darted to the toilet.

The other hovered outside, twisting a strand of long black hair between her fingers as she squinted at Otabek through sharp wings of black eyeliner.

" _T'as quel âge, toi?"_ she asked, blinking at him.

"I don't speak French," Otabek muttered in reply, too tired to scramble for his limited stash of phrases as he turned away. "Excuse me."

"Sorry, please wait a moment! Are you, er-" She hesitated, facing a barrier of either language or etiquette as the teardrop curve of her blue eyes narrowed with concern. "You look… very young."

"I'm leaving," Otabek told her. He could feel his face flushing, deep enough that neither the dim light of the hallway nor the tan of his skin would be enough to hide the scarlet blush. "As soon as my ride gets here."

"A friend of yours? Someone you know well?"

He nodded.

"I will wait with you in the kitchen. It is quieter there," she told him, leaning in to whisper conspiratorially, "I would like to leave too. My friend, she always asks me to come, she promises that we will dance and I will meet her other friends, but then she drinks too much and the only dancing that happens is with the toilet."

"Should you, uh-" Otabek gestured towards the bathroom.

She shrugged. "I will check on her soon."

They stepped into the kitchen, which was marginally quieter and much less packed with people. Otabek sat down at the table and rested his head on his folded arms, fighting off another wave of dizziness that had the room spinning around him, while the girl opened the fridge.

"Here," she said, pushing a bottle of Gatorade towards him. "You should drink this."

"That's not mine," Otabek protested, eyeing the drink warily. His stomach didn't approve of the idea of additional liquid. "I don't really…"

She popped the lid off and took a sip, leaving a smudge of bright red lipstick on the plastic. "Now it is mine, and you can have the rest."

Otabek sighed and took the bottle. The girl – he really should ask her name, or maybe she already told him and he'd forgotten, so he _shouldn't_ ask – opened her purse and pulled out a makeup compact. He sipped slowly as she fixed invisible imperfections. She must not be drunk, he thought, watching the sharp tip of a black pencil pass disconcertingly close to her left eye.

Finally, Otabek's phone buzzed in his hand, jolting him from a slippery doze.

 _I'm outside,_ read JJ's text. _I think this is the right place. Let me know if you don't see me._

The cool night air was soothing against Otabek's skin. It was hot inside, the warmth of dozens of bodies and hundreds of dancing trapped in too small a space. The scent of cars and freshly cut grass was preferable, too, to the heavy, clinging odor of the party.

"Is that your friend?" The girl pointed a few meters down the street. Otabek squinted and nodded when he saw the dark, bed-mussed tufts of JJ's hair appear over the roof of the car.

"Hey, Beks!" JJ called out. He was wearing a white tank top and pyjama pants. "Good to go?"

"Yeah," mumbled Otabek, dropping his eyes to the sidewalk. He counted the grubby smears of old chewing gum and indeterminate stains smeared across the cement as he walked over to meet JJ. Eager as he was to get home and scrub the grit of alcohol from his teeth, he couldn't shake the feeling of being passed from one babysitter to another. The burn of humiliation throbbed in time with his headache.

"Oh, JJ!" The girl laughed suddenly. Otabek winced. "We have literature together, yes?"

"Isabella, right?" JJ beamed brightly enough to obscure the red plaid of his pants. "Beks skates at my rink. Have you been keeping him company?"

The girl – Isabella – nodded and cast a sidelong glance at Otabek, which he pretended not to see, and switched to a sudden stream of French, which he pretended not to hear.

"Thank you," he told her when he could slip a word in edgewise. "For… yeah."

JJ and Isabella blinked at him in mild surprise, as if they'd forgotten that he was the reason they were standing by the street at nearly four in the morning, and as much as Otabek would love to fade into the background and disappear, he wanted to leave.

He climbed into the passenger seat.

"You will text me when you're both home safe?" Isabella asked, in English this time, smiling at JJ. "Otherwise, I will worry."

"You got it, Belle."

Then they were driving away. Otabek rested his head on the cold glass of the window, hoping that JJ would be merciful and _quiet._

He wasn't.

"So, Beks. I didn't expect you to be such a party animal, you don't really seem the type," began JJ, still smiling. "Wasn't that a bit wild for a thirteen-year-old?"

"I'm almost fifteen," mumbled Otabek, gritting his teeth. "Thank you for picking me up."

"I just don't think that should become a habit, yeah?" He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel as they idled at a stoplight. "I know you start drinking early in Russia, but you've only been here for a month and you're an athlete-"

"I know," Otabek growled, peeling his cheek from the window. He should have figured out the bus, or walked back to the dorms, or slept under a bridge. It would be better than JJ's fucking… fucking _JJ-_ ness _._ "And I'm _not_ Russian. If I were Russian, I wouldn't be training halfway across the world and still behind everyone else my age where everyone thinks I'm Russian anyway because they've never heard of Kazakhstan."

He closed his mouth with an audible snap. Okay. Alcohol. Alcohol does that. Good to know.

For the first time since they'd met at the airport, JJ didn't have anything to say. He stared at the road, looked over at Otabek for a second, and turned back without a word.

"Sorry," Otabek continued, when the unaccustomed silence became unbearable. "I shouldn't have gone. Please don't tell the coach."

"I know you're not Russian, Beks," JJ replied quietly, and bit his lip. "I was just teasing. I didn't think it actually upset you."

"Russia basically owned my country for seventy years," he said shortly. "We don't like being called Russian."

"I'm sorry," said JJ. He sighed. "Are you okay coming back to my place? The dorms will be locked."

Shit, curfew. Otabek had forgotten about curfew. He'd have to call the residence assistant, if he could figure out who was on duty, and whoever that was would be both displeased and immediately notice that he'd been drinking. That would be a scolding if he was lucky and a write-up if he wasn't. But…

"It's fine. I'll wait in the lobby, I can get in soon."

"Beks, I can't just let you sit around in the middle of the night like this, it's fine."

"Won't your parents be annoyed?" Or, worse, ask questions about why there was a strange, hungover teenager on their sofa.

"I live alone," JJ informed him. "I have an apartment near the rink."

Of course someone who had his own car as soon as he could drive wouldn't stay in the sports dorms.

"Oh. I thought you were from Montreal."

" _Montréalais_ through and through, baby." The smile was back. "My parents moved to Toronto to coach when I was training in Detroit. My siblings too. Well, Marie-Claire and Paul-Henri were already in college, and Amélie's in New York with her husband, but most of them."

"Most of them," Otabek said slowly. He tried (and failed) to keep the disbelief from his voice. "How many siblings do you _have?_ "

"Ten."

"There's ten of you?" Otabek tried to picture that many people in his parents' tiny apartment in Almaty. "Shit. I mean, wow."

"There's eleven of us, Beks, I have ten siblings," laughed JJ. "Four brothers and six sisters."

"I have a sister," Otabek said after a moment's hesitation. "Gulshat. She's older."

"And you're both Kazakh." One of JJ's eyes narrowed into a wink when he _really_ smiled, Otabek realized.

"Um, yes, but Kazakh mostly means the ethnic group." Otabek thought he might be pushing his luck at this point. "We're Kazakhstani, and ethnically we're Kazakh and Uzbek. We might have family other places, too, but…" He shrugged. "A lot of people lost contact when the USSR took over. We don't know."

"Ah. Right." JJ pulled over, slotting the car neatly into a tiny space on the side of the street. "I'll be up early for Mass, but you're welcome to whatever's in the fridge if I'm not home."

"I'll get up," Otabek told him, clambering out of the car - his legs were almost steady underneath him, even if the pavement itself was a bit wobbly. He didn't want to overstay his already uncomfortably kind invitation, and especially not sleep in after cutting into JJ's undoubtedly limited sleep. "I should get back to the dorm anyway."

"Up to you, Beks," JJ said cheerfully as he unlocked the door to the apartment complex. "How'd you end up at that party, anyway, did you sneak in?"

"I was invited," he snapped back. "A guy in my algebra class, he's on the hockey team, he recognized me from the rink and asked if I wanted to come."

The algebra class in which he was two years younger than the other students, who mostly looked over the top of his head instead of talking to him. The invitation had been a surprise, an unexpected relief from the monotony of homework and training. Thomas had given Otabek a small, white-toothed smile and a wink that drew an unfair amount of attention to the rich hazel of his eyes, and Otabek had been naïve enough to let ignite a spark of hope that this was _let's go to a party together_ instead of _you can come too, I guess._

"Next time you're bored, hang out with me instead, yeah?" JJ said, fumbling to twist the key in his flat's creaky lock. "I'm more fun, anyway."

Otabek was too tired to do anything except nod, but worry still pricked at his mind. He wasn't exactly a student any rink was lining up to accept, not yet, and if he got a reputation for troublemaking…

"You're not-"

"I won't tell Coach, Beks," sighed JJ. "But he wouldn't be mad, you know?"

Maybe not, but Otabek would prefer not to risk it. He took the offered stack of blankets and pillows and curled up on the soft red sofa, letting the tipsy thoughts and alcohol-sodden sentiment whirl through his head in a dizzying kaleidoscope. JJ might be an obnoxious person, Otabek decided, but he was a pretty decent friend.

 **:: :: ::**

"I'm going to get that combination and win the Junior Grand Prix with it," JJ announced to the rink at large, dusting imaginary specks off his shirt. "Right, Beks?"

Otabek winced. "You almost landed it that time," he offered. "You're really close."

He turned back to his own practice before JJ could continue. As the pressure surrounding the next competitive season built, so did the frequency (and volume) of JJ's boasts. Where Otabek grew quiet, focusing on each of his weaknesses, magnifying flaws into gaping failures in the privacy of his own mind, JJ put each of his strengths on a pedestal. It was probably healthier in the long run.

He also, Otabek would admit without hesitation, had a decent shot of actually bringing home the gold medal in the junior GPF – and if he did, he would deserve it, though Leo would be strong competition this year, with what he'd shown Otabek of his routines over Skype.

Otabek, unarguably, didn't have a chance: he hadn't been assigned to any of the qualifying events.

"I'm going to get it this time!" JJ shouted across the ice. "Wish me luck?"

" _Bonne chance!_ " replied Otabek, meaning it with everything he had even as the knot of envy in his chest twinged. JJ flashed Otabek and his heavily accented French an incandescent smile.

His lack of placement in the Grand Prix series wasn't a surprise, merely a stinging reminder of the heavy weight of frustration that had followed Otabek since he finished in the middle of the pack at Junior Worlds. No one from Kazakhstan had placed high enough to earn them slots for the next fall. _He_ hadn't placed high enough.

He'd do better this year.

The sharp, clean _crack_ of metal against ice and its accompanying cry of glee jolted Otabek out of his daze of footwork and choreography that would premiere at nothing more than a regional competition.

"Nice, JJ!" called their coach, nodding his approval. "Keep that up, watch your free leg at the start there."

Otabek gave him a thumbs-up.

At lunch, JJ barely paused for breath as he described what it felt like to feel the ice steady under his foot as he came down, how he'd _known_ as soon as he woke up that today was going to be great. The other juniors gathered their half-finished meals and drifted away in search of quieter surroundings while Otabek half-listened, half-dozed through JJ's exclamations.

"How's Isabella?" he asked at last. It was the only surefire way to distract JJ when he got going, and Otabek tried to save it for emergencies.

"She's perfect, Beks," sighed JJ. "So you know she goes to my church, I just never saw her there because her family goes to evening Mass and I go in the morning, right? Well, we have the same volunteer hours this month, and it's nice to see her more outside of school, I always thought she was really cool but we never actually talked, you know?"

Otabek knew.

"Y'know, Beks, I'm really glad you went to that party even if it did suck. Belle's been texting me since then, just chatting and stuff, did you know she's on the lacrosse team? I don't know how we'd have started talking if it hadn't been for that night." JJ paused, resting his chin in his hands. "It was so lucky. And today, I've been skating better since you got here, I guess because you're always so determined and then I am too. But you're like a lucky charm."

Otabek knew that, too.


	3. Three For A Funeral

Otabek watched the Grand Prix Final from underneath a mound of blankets in his dorm room, his laptop casting a flickering glow against the yellow-ish walls. Across the world in Fukuoka, the best skaters were warming up for the free skate while Otabek debated whether to drag himself out of bed to adjust the thermostat.

The announcers voice cut in and Otabek pulled the duvet up to the top of his head, cocooning himself against the chill of Canada's winter nights – the thirteen hour time difference meant he didn't have to skip school to watch, but the next day would be a haze of exhaustion.

 _Five bucks says Nikiforov sets a new record,_ texted Leo. He hadn't managed to skate his way into the final six, and would be watching from Colorado instead of in from the arena seating, like JJ and his bronze medal were.

Otabek narrowed his eyes and thought back to the short program scores. _Six that he sets a new combined record,_ he replied. _Oda for silver?_

 _I'm calling Giacometti,_ Leo countered. _That butt don't lose, bro._

Onscreen, Cao Bin dropped his final pose and bowed. A Russian skater, Popovich, took the ice behind him. Otabek bit his lip, inspecting the scrapes left on his palm by that afternoon's practice, as the announcers talked about themes and inspiration.

He spoke silently to the tiny figures dancing across the ice, begging for an answer no one had been able to give him.

 _What makes you special,_ he demanded, _what makes you different?_

Skill, no, not exactly - so many of them had skill and talent and perseverance, but their impression faded almost before the last strains of music faded away.

What made people want to watch JJ and let their eyes slip away from Otabek, what weight did Chulanont's presence have that outweighed JJ's quad Salchow?

His thoughts shifted once more to the memory-fogged image of Yuri Plisetsky, standing by the barre with steel in his spine and granite eyes. Yuri, who danced like he knew what the world was offering him and was determined to wring out more than it promised, who skated with a fire that demanded the stars.

Yuri, Otabek thought, made his own luck no matter what was offered to him.

It was time for him to do the same. The universe might not be inclined to hand him much, but that didn't stop Otabek from taking it anyway.

 _That_ was the difference, he decided.

Viktor Nikiforov skated his routine with eerie perfection. In the kiss and cry, he flashed a tranquil smile at the cameras after a mere glance at his score, which was probably being entered into the record books at that very moment. It was a fraction of a point below his combined world record.

A wave of melancholy washed through Otabek as their eyes met for a startling instant, passed from person to camera to screen across an ocean and eleven thousand kilometers. Instead of the hunger for more that adorned the faces of his competitors, there was a blankness in the blue gaze.

Maybe Viktor had reached the limits of what could be yanked from life's grip, and his hands found only empty space when he reached for more.

 _Visit and buy me coffee,_ Leo told him.

Otabek huffed a breathless laugh, wondering what Viktor had given up for his place on the podium – on all the podiums. If he had a friend to make silly bets with, or if that was his own offering to Lady Luck.

Yes, he must. Most people got to keep their luck instead of sharing it around, and they didn't have to decide between friends and victory.

It was time for Otabek to test his own chances.

 **:: :: ::**

Spring may have symbolized rebirth and new beginnings, but Otabek thought winter was where the real changes happened. The ice and snow stripped away everything unnecessary. It froze out the rot and waste, leaving behind only what really mattered. The seeds of spring had been planted many months before, but it was winter that gave them the space to grow.

Gymnastics, weights, yoga, breakdancing, Otabek tried it all. Peeling off the layers of warm clothing as he entered a new studio felt like unwrapping another layer of the chrysalis he was just beginning to shrug off. Some things stuck, some didn't, but a new sturdiness in his legs and a broadness stretching between his shoulders were promises of what lay beneath the snow.

"You're finding your JJ Style!" commented JJ himself, clapping Otabek on the back after he returned from a regional competition with a silver medal and the judges' attention. "Looks good, Beks."

Otabek eyed him. "I'm pretty sure I'm not."

"Nah, I mean, you're doing _you_ now," JJ explained. "That's what JJ Style is. I wanted to skate like me, not like everyone else, and I had to figure out how to do it."

"Oh. Thanks." Otabek stared at his phone, flicking through photos. It was close enough, he supposed, but JJ seemed to grow into the shoes left open for him – he'd always known who he was.

A black and white kitten filled the screen. Otabek smiled. Yuri Plisetsky had burst into the social media scene on his thirteenth birthday with the same fury he'd held in every graceful plié, bombarding the feed with photo after photo of Saint Petersburg, his home rink, his dance studio, and his cat. At the end of Yuri's training day, he always posted a new video of him performing a flawless jump or spin. The time difference meant that Otabek usually saw it first thing in the morning, and tried it himself (with varying success) a couple of hours later.

Sometimes, Otabek posted his own videos, sneaking them between pictures of his small group of friends and his favorite spots in the city. Yuri never saw them, of course – Otabek's Instagram was firmly set to private. He wasn't sure Yuri, surrounded by the living legends of figure skating and his own budding group of fans, would bother with a second glance if he did come across them.

He could still see the same fire in Yuri's eyes, the sort of fire that only warmed until it consumed, and left behind something that was harder and sharper and _hungrier_. This time, Otabek thought to wonder what it was that pushed Yuri Plisetsky to fight so hard.

He decided that, at some point, he would ask.

JJ interrupted Otabek's thoughts.

"Hey, Beks, are you coming out with me and Belle tonight?"

Otabek considered it. He liked Isabella. He liked JJ - a fact he'd tried to argue himself out of on more than one occasion, but each time JJ had done something so obnoxiously _decent_ that Otabek couldn't convince himself.

Together, they were… a lot.

Largely because they were not, in fact, _together._

"Thanks, but I have some plans already," demurred Otabek, before adding, "You should really ask her out already."

"I told you, Beks, I've gotta wait for the right time." JJ's smile cracked a bit around the edges. "Or are you trying to get a date first?"

 _It's not a race,_ Otabek almost told him, with a flash of sympathetic irritation. _You don't always have to be the best._

Instead, what he actually said was, "Maybe I will."

He wasn't actually lying about the plans.

"I can't stay too long," Otabek announced, sliding into the booth. "What's the news?"

Pari snorted at him from behind her fringe of black hair instead of answering. "We're shocked, Altin. You're never busy." She glanced around the table. "Soda says it's dance class."

"Too general, Pari, you know the rules," Nasser retorted, grinning at Otabek. "Skype with your family."

"Okay, hip-hop," agreed Pari. She nudged Chloé.

"Um, secret DJ gig?"

Otabek lifted an eyebrow at the group.

"No dancing," he said, chuckling at Pari's huff of dismay. "Nasser, it's the middle of the night in Almaty, and Chloé, if I had a gig I'd make you all go. So, what's up?"

His friends stared at him in disconcerting unison. The two girls were biting their lips to hide smiles, and Nasser's face was twisted like he wasn't sure whether to laugh or scold. At the next booth over, a waitress wiped down the plastic surface of the table.

He stared back, waiting for one of them to crack.

Nasser finally dropped his head to the table with a dull _thunk_ and groaned. "We're celebrating, idiot."

" _Someone_ didn't tell us that going to his next competition meant that he was the best skater in his whole country," Chloé said, brown eyes peering accusingly through her thick glasses. She'd shaved another part of her head recently, Otabek noticed belatedly. "So, we're going to show him our love by teasing him about this relentlessly until… The Worlds?."

Otabek sighed.

"Kazakhstan barely has any figure skaters. I'm one of the only juniors. It's me or no one."

"Beka, shut the fuck up," Nasser said kindly. "Unless you don't want the present we figured out for after you compete."

They all had a certain glint in their eyes. Otabek's mouth quirked into a smile.

"Wait, wasn't this going to be a surprise?" Chloé interrupted. "I thought it was gonna be a surprise."

"Um-" Nasser blinked. "Shit."

"You're all idiots," Pari told them with a smirk. "Well, Beka, you know how my sister is going to Kolkata in May?"

He didn't, but he nodded for her to go on anyway.

"And she asked me to watch her apartment while she's away."

Nasser and Chloé had begun to giggle.

"And she's _definitely_ going to leave the keys to her bike in her apartment for the month."

"This sounds illegal," Otabek replied carefully. Not that Pari hadn't learned to ride a motorcycle from that very sister, and hadn't been 'borrowing' it for a couple of years now.

"Definitely," Chloé said happily, at the same time as Nasser exclaimed, "Not really!"

"Mildly," Pari decided nonchalantly. "Worst comes to worst, she'll murder us in our sleep. You in?"

Otabek grinned. "Absolutely."

"Wait, what _are_ you doing tonight?" Nasser asked. "Maybe you should buy us all soda."

"Homework," groaned Otabek. "Buy your own damn sodas."

 **:: :: ::**

JJ crashed into Otabek's side, skittering across the locker room floor in slippery skate guards.

"I did it!" he shouted, brandishing the silver disc. "Beks, I did it!"

"Congratulations," Otabek replied, dazed. He coughed a little as JJ's shoulder hit him in the throat, returning the hug with all the strength left in his aching muscles. His own score floated through his mind, glittering with all the neon edges of a dream. _Tenth._ "You- yeah."

" _You_ did it, Beks," JJ exclaimed, pulling back and beaming at Otabek. "Top ten, man, you made it!"

Otabek laughed. His abs twinged as they protested the movement. He'd scraped in below Leo by two tenths of a point, but it had been enough. Enough to give him the hope of Grand Prix placements, and more importantly, enough that Kazakhstan could send a second boy to Junior Worlds next year.

"You've gotta get to the Grand Prix Final this year, Beks, I'm gonna win," continued JJ, prodding the shiny swell of a new blister on his heel. "Viktor Nikiforov better watch out!"

JJ was moving up to the senior division.

He wouldn't be skating against Otabek next year.

"You bet," replied Otabek, laughing once more. "Let's do it."

 _Tenth._

 **:: :: ::**

That spring, Otabek learned to ride a motorcycle. He also learned how to hide a motorcycle and four giggling teenagers in convenient row of bushes.

In summer, he went back to Almaty for two weeks and wondered how the air itself seemed to have a different texture when it smelled like home. His family presented him with a card that was filled with notes of congratulations and encouragement from all the members of their mosque who had helped send Otabek to Russia and start what he was beginning to think of as his career.

When fall came, Yuri Plisetsky hit the junior circuit with the force of a hurricane. They shared no qualifiers, to Otabek's mixed relief and disappointment, and he watched with JJ as the Grand Prix Final went on without them. He was sixteen, and trying to remember what it was like to feel young. Other than Leo, the juniors looked too small and fragile to be real.

Yuri tore his way to the top. He didn't smile as he stood atop the podium. Otabek wondered why. Later, he commented a simple _congratulations_ on Yuri's photo of a gold medal resting between a cat's fluffy paws. It was quickly lost in the stream of posts from his fans, who had begun to call themselves the Angels.

In January, JJ finally succeeded in teaching Otabek how to land a quad Salchow.

He posted a video of it to his Instagram.

 _#see you at worlds_


	4. Four For A Birth

"You said you were going to ask her when the Grand Prix was finished. Which was last month."

"After I skated at the Final," corrected JJ, shuffling the cards without looking up at Otabek. "I didn't qualify."

"Which prevents you from going on a date _how?_ "

JJ's habitual grin was white-toothed and stiff. Otabek sighed. It wasn't his right to push, it wasn't his life – and yet, watching Isabella and JJ dance around each other for what was now going on a year and a half was something akin to torture. He'd thought that Isabella would get tired of it and ask him out herself, but she seemed to be set on tradition.

"I told her I was gonna win and I didn't, Beks." He shuffled the stack of cards again. Was it self-centered when the only person JJ was proving himself to was himself? JJ caught the frustration in Otabek's eyes. "Look, it's different for you, everyone's expecting me to do well-"

"And they all assume I'll fail?" Otabek heard his voice grow cold. He was a mediocre skater from an obscure country, and so JJ wasn't exactly wrong, but hadn't he at least started to show that he was more than that, that Kazakhstan was more than an unknown patch on the map? JJ flinched as he continued. "Yeah, makes it real easy to surpass expectations. I'm so lucky."

"Beks, you know that's not what I meant," JJ replied. He paused, hand outstretched, in the middle of dealing the cards.

"But it's what you said." It wasn't, exactly, but Otabek wasn't in a mood to be fair. JJ's shoulders slumped.

"I'm sorry, Beks," he said eventually. "Thanks for telling me when to shut up. I really didn't… I meant to say that you always do better than anyone thinks you will. Even better than you think you will. And you don't give up."

"It's okay." Otabek let out a breath he didn't know he was holding. "I know. I'm sorry for pushing."

"Pax?" JJ asked hopefully, grinning as Otabek nodded in agreement. "You're right, though. I'll do it after Nationals. How many cards do you have?"

"Four. Even if you don't win?"

"I'm going to win." JJ tossed two more cards onto each pile, and Otabek raised an eyebrow. "Okay, _even if_ I don't win, cross my heart. They play this in Russia too, right?"

"Durak?" Otabek laughed. "Yes, they play it in Russia."

"We should find the Russians at Worlds, challenge them to a game. Maybe strip durak." JJ winked as Otabek winced at his pronunciation – _doo-rack_. "They'd never expect me to win."

"You'd be naked in three rounds," Otabek informed him. "Russians can smell weakness."

"Hey now," pouted JJ. "I'm not that bad, I win against you all the time."

Otabek rearranged his cards instead of answering. JJ would keep talking in a second anyway.

"So, how would strip durak work? Or like, could we do a drinking game? There has to be a drinking game with this."

 **:: :: ::**

The Canadian national competition was held in Kingston, Ontario. He let JJ continue to wheedle and plead for his company, although Otabek had booked his train tickets for the three hour trip several days before.

"Man, you just let me keep asking?" pouted JJ, dropping his suitcase by the hotel room door. "Last time you said you weren't sure because you might have to give your cat a bath!"

"JJ, I don't _have_ a cat," Otabek reminded him. He let his own bag fall to the floor with a heavy thump – he wasn't competing, so the weight of his luggage was almost entirely textbooks and homework. "That was a joke."

"You could have had a secret cat, Beks, I didn't know."

"I live in the dorms."

"Hence why it would have to be a _secret_ cat."

"You were in my room when I said that."

"A very secret cat," replied JJ with a snort of laughter. "Your poker face is so good, dude, you could be holding a cat and tell everyone you didn't have one, we'd all believe you."

"This is not the forbidden dorm pet you are looking for." Otabek smirked, then added, "Your parents will be there?"

"Yeah. They have students competing too," he said. JJ's voice was quiet, by his standards. "You know I got in?"

"To?"

"University of Toronto. Early decision."

"Congrats," Otabek said, weighing his words. It had always been a sure thing – JJ never slipped from his position at the top of his class. He hadn't even bothered applying to another school. "Your family must be excited."

"Of course they are, I'll be their best student." JJ tugged his laptop from its bag and flopped down onto the bed. "Hey, I'm gonna call Belle, then the coach wants to run over that bit of choreo in my free skate, d'you wanna come with me and my parents for dinner? My sister might be there too, and I think one of their students-"

"Maybe, thanks," Otabek replied, rooting through his bag for a scarf. Technically, he should, on the basis of networking if nothing else. Socially, he should give JJ the scant time with his parents they'd scraped together between their competition duties – even if JJ never seemed to mind his company. "I'll head out now, let you talk to Belle."

"You don't have to!" JJ called back immediately. Headphone wires already dangled from his ears. "You can talk too, Belle will be happy to see you!"

Otabek sighed meaningfully as he adjusted his gloves.

"She _will_ \- oh," he said with a pause and a blush. "She wouldn't?"

"She wants to talk to you, not _us_ ," Otabek told him. "Say hi for me, though."

"Thanks, Beks."

Otabek heard the call connect as he closed the door - or rather, he heard JJ's voice drop what sounded like half an octave as he burst into excited French, and almost felt the _ting_ as light glinted off his bright smile.

He smiled to himself, then. Kingston was a small city, at least compared to Montreal, but it had clubs. More importantly, it had clubs where the DJs didn't know him as the (underage) kid who asked about the equipment, and bouncers who hadn't learned his face. Otabek traced the edge of his wallet, a quiet thrill building when he thought about the fake Pari had passed to him for his birthday.

 _"Could be twenty, easy, as long as you scowl,"_ she'd said, nudging him in the ribs. _"Then you just look angry about being short instead of being a sixteen-year-old international athlete slash delinquent."_

He stepped into the street and shivered in the breeze. The air was fresh, untouched, new against his skin – it felt like stepping off the plane when he'd arrived in Russia, thirteen years old and filled with more ambition than skill.

It felt like the formal email sitting in his inbox, the one he hadn't mentioned to JJ or his parents, that promised higher risks and richer rewards.

It felt like moving on.

Otabek wondered if JJ had told Isabella that he was moving across the country come fall.

 **:: :: ::**

JJ didn't look great as he skated to the center of the ice. His smile was fixed and glassy, flatter than the posters of his face held up around the rink by a smattering of screaming fans. Otabek was too far away to see clearly, but he would have bet even Leo that JJ's hands were shaking.

Nerves. JJ liked to tease Otabek about being rivals, but only from his position of comfortable superiority – Otabek was no competition for JJ, not yet. Friendly competition, with all of the _friends_ and none of the _competition,_ meant safety. There were no hard feelings, no hard losses, no resentment, because the outcome was predetermined. Still, it must have been easier to tell himself he was skating against his friend than against the one obstacle that regularly held JJ back, which manifested as a sheen of cold sweat and quick, shallow breaths.

Sometimes Otabek believed that the only thing that really pushed JJ to victory was his fear of defeat.

" _Bonne chance!_ " he yelled, hoping JJ could hear him over the low roar of the crowd.

 **:: :: ::**

When the short programs were over, JJ was at the top.

That evening, a club employee took a second glance at Otabek's ID and turned him away at the door. He knew from experience that insisting he only wanted to hear the music was more likely to bring a threat of cops than admission, and spent the night finishing a biology worksheet.

Otabek wished JJ good luck before the free skate. He finished with a personal best and a gold medal.

While the skaters, coaches, and sponsors attended the banquet after the gala – nothing so fancy as the parties after international competitions, and not something he minded missing – he walked into a barber shop.

"Very cool," the employee said approvingly.

Otabek ran his fingers across the velvety plush of freshly shaved hair. His ears felt cold, and stray clippings prickled against his neck as he donned his hat and scarf.

JJ and his parents were chatting in the hotel lobby when he got back, still wrapped in their layers of winter clothing.

"Beks!" JJ called, waving goodbye to his parents and darting over. "Hey, Beks!"

"You've gotta ask Isabella out now, no excuses," teased Otabek, elbowing him in the ribs. "Congrats, again."

"I should take you to all my competitions," replied JJ. His eyes sparkled. "I'm gonna ask her tomorrow. But Dad said he bought new clothes before he asked Mom out the first time, kinda get her attention, so-" Otabek privately thought that if Isabella paid JJ any more attention, they'd be a public safety hazard, but he nodded encouragingly. JJ pulled off his hat. "Cool, yeah?"

"It looks great," Otabek said. It did. JJ looked like undercuts had been invented for him, personally.

He sighed and took his own hat off.

JJ laughed, delighted. "You got my haircut! Nice choice, Beks."

 _Just this one thing,_ Otabek whispered silently to any deities that might be listening. _I just wanted this one thing._

 **:: :: ::**

On Valentine's Day, Otabek kissed Chloé while they waited for Nasser to meet them in the park, in a moment that was a simultaneous shrug of _why not_ instead of a flash of emotional sincerity. They didn't speak for a few minutes after.

"Yeah, I, um. I think I'm gay." Otabek pushed his hands deeper into his jacket, avoiding her eyes.

Chloé's sigh turned into a choke of laughter.

"Thank fuck, Altin, me too. Worth a shot, though, yeah?"

"Worth a shot," he agreed. Chloé was easier to be with than Pari and Nasser, less full of their high-strung energy. They could be quiet together. "Let's never talk about this again?"

"Cross my heart," Chloé agreed. "It never happened."

 **:: :: ::**

Spring came quickly this year, in a whirl of training and evening board games. Isabella preferred to watch them play while she worked on essays or doodled in the tiny sketchbook no one except JJ was allowed to see, though they offered her the dice at the beginning of every game.

Isabella accepted an offer to the University of Toronto, and as the days lengthened, they began to pore over apartment listings.

A boy in Otabek's class ran his hands over his tightly curled black hair and asked about getting coffee sometime. Otabek apologized to both of them – he would be largely absent until after Worlds, and then completely gone when the school year ended.

They kissed anyway, a few times - just often enough that it would hurt when Otabek flew to Almaty.

 **:: :: ::**

The World Figure Skating Championships would be the last time Otabek skated in the junior division, a prospect that was equally elating and terrifying. It would mean more competitions, more flexibility, more room to push himself in new directions that were largely blocked off for junior skaters. It would also mean meeting JJ and Leo on the ice again.

As Otabek watched a clip of Yuri Plisetsky's performance at the Russian nationals, he thought he might have more of a chance in the senior division anyway.

This year, his dreams of a medal didn't matter. Nothing the other skaters could achieve were important, because Otabek's goal boiled down to a simple number: 168.60.

Ali, his almost-coach, wanted to try for a Grand Prix run as Otabek's senior debut. Even if he didn't win, or even make it to the final itself, the extra time on the ice would bolster Otabek's burgeoning popularity in Kazakhstan's small but devoted figure skating community, and sponsorships could do for him what sports scholarships hadn't.

This time, he didn't need to _win_ to win.

But, to get there, he had to qualify for Grand Prix placement, which meant a minimum total score of 168.60 in Worlds.

His personal best was stubbornly resting at 166.50. So was his height – the only growing Otabek had done for several months was his increasing suspicion that he was as tall as he was going to get.

That part, at least, didn't bother him.

As Otabek dragged himself and the leaden weight of his jetlag into the lobby of his hotel, the only thought left in his mind was that simple number, repeating over and over. Their group checked in at the desk, keycards were handed out – he'd be sharing with JJ again – and Otabek leaned on his suitcase while surveying the room with sticky-dry eyes. Traveling to competitions would be easier once he was back in Almaty. As it was, training in the US meant leapfrogging over the Atlantic Ocean every few weeks.

Various other athletes were wandering in and out. Otabek waved to Guang-Hong, who had the empty-eyed stare of someone who desperately needed both food and sleep, preferably simultaneously, as he trailed behind a couple of Chinese ice dancers.

A babble of Russian filled the air, making Otabek start. In Montreal, the only time he spoke in his first language (or second, possibly, he wasn't sure) was at the tiny Ukrainian bakery a few blocks away from the dorms. The two old women who owned it had taken to him in the manner of many post-Soviet matriarchs as soon as they realized he was from Kazakhstan, inviting him over to drink tea and meet their many, _many_ grandchildren who just so happened to be single and approximately his age.

 _This_ group of Russians was not composed of tiny, wrinkled women and their veritable army of a family, though the older man shepherding them into the hotel had the same aura of frustrated despair as Otabek's extensive supply of great-aunts and uncles. He barked at a redheaded teenager, who rolled her eyes good-naturedly and dragged a younger boy over to wait with her by the elevators.

Otabek blinked.

Yuri Plisetsky slouched against the wall, toying with a package of food that held the overpriced sadness reminiscent of all airport kiosk snacks.

 _I should say hello,_ Otabek thought, dazed. _Maybe-_

He blinked again, because Viktor Nikiforov, four-time Grand Prix Champion and soon to be four-time World Champion, record holder for the short program, free skate, and combined score, living legend of figure skating, was standing about half a meter away from him.

Otabek tried to remember how breathing worked as Viktor glanced at him, smiled, nodded politely, before walking over to join Yuri and the red-haired girl.

"Ready for your first Worlds, Yura?" asked Living Legend Viktor Nikiforov, as calmly as if he were mentioning the weather.

" _Last_ year should have been my first Worlds," Yuri mumbled petulantly. "Stupid-"

"Last year you sprained your ankle," the redhead said, ruffling Yuri's hair. "Don't blame Yakov for that."

"It was _fine,_ Mila, fuck off," he snarled back. Otabek tried not to stare as Yuri batted Mila's hand away and was promptly trapped in a smothering hug. He forced down a dumbfounded giggle as it sank in that the polished, machine-perfect Russians were just as prone to nerves and traveling stress as the rest of them. "Viktor, would you tell the hag to _get off me?!_ "

"Play nice, kids," Viktor hummed absentmindedly. "Best manners, be professional, don't make Yakov yell."

Mila pouted and let go of Yuri, who sat down on his suitcase with an irritated huff. Otabek, who at this point had given up on the whole not-being-a-creep thing and decided that watching Living Legend Viktor Nikiforov & Co. was within the realm of social acceptability, kept watching as Viktor ran his hands through his hair – up close, Otabek could see that it was closer to ash blond than true silver, but only by a fraction of a shade – and the two juniors fidgeted.

Yuri opened the little bag of airport food, which looked marginally worse for the wear, and contemplated the contents. A boiled egg, Otabek thought, trying to remember when he'd last eaten an actual meal. Maybe in New York? Had they even flown through New York this time? Yuri didn't look too pleased with the egg. Maybe if Otabek asked, he would swap it for the tiny package of ginger cookies stashed in the pocket of his carry-on, too plane-sick to eat and too stubborn to throw them out.

Yuri sighed, put the egg in his mouth, and his face filled with regret. Mila began to giggle as he looked around desperately and tapped Viktor on the arm.

Viktor turned around and Yuri spat the unbitten egg into his hand, wiping his mouth with an expression of disgusted horror.

"-you hate eggs, Yura, why do you _always_ do this," cackled Mila, who had crumpled to the floor. "You hated them an hour ago, what did you think was going to change?"

"I'm _hungry,_ " Yuri snapped. "Shut up."

Viktor stared at the egg, then looked up to the ceiling with an expression that neatly straddled the line between _neutral_ and _my soul is leaving my body._

JJ rapped lightly on the side of Otabek's head, drawing him from his daze of shock. When he looked back, all three of the Russians were looking at their phones as if nothing had happened. It _had_ to be a jetlag induced hallucination, or Otabek had fallen asleep standing up and dreamed it all.

Yuri didn't look up as Otabek hauled his luggage into the elevator.

Otabek decided that when he (re)introduced himself to Yuri, he wouldn't bring this up.

 **:: :: ::**

 **168.45**

Otabek wished he could have returned to Almaty as more of a champion than he'd left it.


	5. Five For Heaven

"Beka, will you be home for dinner?" Otabek's mother pushed his bedroom door open with her foot and sighed as it hit a stack of books. "Sorry, _zhanym,_ your father promised to start clearing these out over the weekend."

"It's fine, _ana,_ I have plenty of space." Otabek stood up, surveying the scattered heaps of clothing. As small as his childhood bedroom was, the emptiness still managed to loom. The bare walls were an uninterrupted sky blue, and his suitcases formed an ungainly heap at the foot of his bed. "I'm not sure, I'm sorry. Coach Karimov wants to finish all the paperwork this afternoon, it might take a while."

It felt strange to fit his life back into the plurality of _lives,_ the nesting schedules that made up a family, like the last three years were a summer camp or a fever dream – something tiny stretched into eternity, perhaps, or the largeness of it trimmed until it could comfortably fit back into his family's Almaty apartment.

Had it been a mistake to leave, if he was just going to end up in the same place he'd started?

Taimas, a knee-high mutt with coarse black fur and ears caught in the confusion between upright and floppy, nosed his way into the bedroom and sneezed. His sister, Gulshat, had joked that Taimas was the perfect replacement for Otabek: short, scrappy, and permanently judgmental (though, in Otabek's opinion, the dog was more inclined to watch the goings-on with a vague air of amusement than evaluation).

"The coach and I will grab dinner if it goes too late," Otabek added, as his mother hesitated. "Sorry," he said again, "it's just hectic now."

Life would slowly settle back into an almost predictable schedule. More importantly, Otabek would relearn the little mundanities of his day, about meals that weren't served in a cafeteria and coming home to a _home_ instead of an empty dorm room.

"See you later," Otabek said, pausing to kiss his mother's cheek and give Taimas a scratch behind the ears before grabbing his duffel bag.

As Otabek stepped into the streets of Almaty, he decided that _hope_ was a special sort of fear.

 **:: :: ::**

"I want you to enter in as many competitions and exhibitions as is physically possible." Ali Karimov propped his elbows up on the paper-covered desk, folding his gangling limbs into some semblance of order as he met Otabek's eyes. "At this point, you need exposure and experience more than anything else."

"Okay," replied Otabek, blinking. "Are you sure, I haven't-"

"You score a new personal best at almost every competition. The photo of you and Berik at Worlds was in every sports journal for weeks, and enrollment in figure skating classes has spiked across Kazakhstan," Ali told him, his expression serious. "Medals aren't the only measure of success, Otabek."

"Oh." Otabek could barely remember the picture Ali mentioned, but the moment it captured was clear in his mind: the shock and warmth as a small boy launched himself across the room, thanked Otabek for the opportunity, and hugged him tightly enough to make his ribs ache. The other junior skater from Kazakhstan, someone explained to him, the one whose slot in the competition had been secured by his tenth-place victory the year before. Even through the haze of disappointment about his failure to qualify for the Grand Prix, Otabek felt a spark of joy ignite. "I- okay. Which events?"

Ali winked and handed him a sheet of paper. Otabek skimmed the list, his eyes widening as he took in the seemingly endless names, places, and dates.

"All that you can."

Otabek smiled.

 **:: :: ::**

His phone buzzed.

Without lifting his head from the biology textbook, Otabek fumbled for it, almost knocking the device off his desk. He answered Leo's Skype call without thinking and grinned blearily as his friend's face filled the screen.

"Sorry, Bek, were you asleep?"

"I wasn't supposed to be," Otabek yawned. "So let's say no. What's up?"

"I knew you were aching to see my beautiful face," Leo said, flipping his hair. "Also, Guang Hong and I are switching it up this year. I'll be in Beijing roundabouts August, which just so happens to be on approximately the same continent as Almaty if my information is correct."

"Hmm," deadpanned Otabek. "I'll have to check my schedule, I might be-"

"Washing your cat?" Leo giggled. "That's okay, I really just want to hang out with your parents."

"You've been using me this whole time. You only wanted my dad's baursak, didn't you?" Otabek grinned as Leo's light, easy laugh filled the room. "I really will have to check my schedule, but yeah. We even have a whole couch you can sleep on."

"No cuddling?" Leo pouted. "You'll let me freeze, all alone on the cold summer nights?"

"Taimas has dibs on the bed." Otabek wiggled his toes, prompting a snort and an eyeroll from the dog napping under his desk. "He snores, too."

"Can't argue with that. We'll figure out a weekend soon, then?"

They chatted for a while longer, until Leo glanced at the clock with a heavy sigh.

"Gotta go, Bek, I'm about to turn into a pumpkin."

"Night, Leo." Otabek hung up, pushing his schoolwork aside. He had time for a run before lunch.

As he ran, Otabek found himself comparing the buildings and gardens to his favorite paths in Montreal, tracing the similarities between the curve of a tree or shadow of a storefront as he jogged past, Taimas trotting happily at his heels.

Even after a month back in Almaty, he would sometimes be startled form his thoughts as nearby conversations in Kazakh or Russian drifted into his ears. It was strange, in a way, to no longer be surrounded by the omnipresent pressure of another culture – as if Otabek had been underwater for so long that he'd grown gills, and now had to remember how to breathe air instead. It rasped at his consciousness. He found himself picking up packets of American junk food at the grocery and playing certain songs on repeat, warming up to the beat of French lyrics.

Otabek stopped at a park bench to give Taimas water and tighten the laces on his new shoes, which had managed to chafe a raw spot between callouses on his foot.

He had his foot propped on the bench and was leaning forward, fiddling with the knot, when Taimas sneezed.

"Um, hi," a boy's voice said behind him. "This is weird, I guess, but are you Otabek Altin?"

Otabek straightened up, raked a lock of sweaty hair off his forehead, and turned around to find a tall teenager looking down at him. A pair of glasses rested between the bangs of his shiny black hair and blushing cheeks.

"Yeah, I am. Um. Otabek," he replied, fighting back his own flush. Otabek had been recognized a handful of times before, but this felt different, with the sparkling brown eyes wide as their gaze rested on his face. "Nice to meet you." He held out his hand, then pulled it back. "Uh, sorry, I'm kind of sweaty, I-"

"I thought you were!" The boy beamed at him. "I'm Timur, I saw you in that ad, the sports clothes one, and the papers, of course. This is so cool, I didn't know you lived around here! Can I, you know-"

He pulled his phone out of his pocket.

Otabek nodded, bemused, and Timur leaned in to take a photo. He had to crouch down to fit both their faces comfortably in the frame.

"Sorry to bother you, Otabek, this is just _so cool,_ " he repeated. "I guess this happens to you all the time, right?"

"Not really," Otabek said. Timur's enthusiasm was contagious, and small smile had begun to creep onto his face. "No, it's nice to meet you, I'm actually not used to this at all."

"Well, you're a little bit famous around here," Timur told him. He tilted his head. "Honestly, when I saw your picture, I thought you would be-"

"Taller?"

"Less attractive," said Timur, winking. "You know, makeup, photoshop, whatever."

"I- thanks." Otabek desperately hoped that his habitual neutral expression was still covering for him.

"You know, if you're not too busy being famous and handsome, we could get coffee sometime."

"Sure," he managed, typing his number into the proffered phone. "Um, thanks."

"No, thank _you_ ," Timur replied. "See you later, then, Otabek!"

Otabek let Taimas lead the way home, jogging dazedly behind.

 **:: :: ::**

Practice was more exhausting, both mentally and physically, than anything Otabek had ever experienced. With his seventeenth birthday approaching, the risk of injuries from immature limbs was decreasing, and gone were the days of jump restrictions and frequent, mandatory breaks.

Missing, too, were the other skaters – Otabek and Ali didn't have the rink to themselves, but there were no other seniors for the coach to split his attention between. It was equal parts frustrating and exhilarating as the tiniest movements were picked apart, examined for flaws, and replaced, a never-ending series of meticulous adjustments and improvements.

By the time afternoon rolled around each day, Otabek was debating whether he should take a shower or just lie facedown on the ice until a Zamboni arrived to scrape him off.

In other words, it was perfect.

As usual, several text messages were waiting for him. His sister Gulshat wanted to borrow a book, JJ had sent him a photo of himself and Isabella with a group of… musicians, Otabek decided, and there was a cryptic meme about minor keys from Leo.

 _Bekaaaa,_ read the last. _Beka, are you dead? RIP._

 _Just got off the ice,_ he replied. _Probably dead. Bones have melted. Please send flowers to my parents._

 _Can zombie Beka come out for dinner tonight?_

He could see Timur's tiny pout already, the soft, playful touch on his shoulder.

 _I think so, but I have an essay to finish. Would tomorrow work?_

A pause. Otabek stuck a bandage over a freshly torn blister and pulled on his socks.

 _Nooooo, I've finally got all my friends in one place and they want to meet you! ):_

 _I'll write as fast as I can._

This time, his phone beeped almost instantly.

 _3 3 3_

Otabek sighed, flexed his fingers, and thought longingly about dropping out of school. It would make life easier for a few years, until he retired from skating and had to find what his sister referred to as a 'real job.' Or, rather, until his parents caught wind of it and murdered him for his own good.

Online classes had it all in terms of scheduling, at least.

Six o'clock. His father would worry if Otabek went to bed this early, but _he_ hadn't been up for twelve hours, and – right. He had plans anyway. Otabek grabbed his phone, which lay hidden under his pillow, muted and silent.

 _Hey Beka, are you done yet?_

 _I know we said eight but I'll come pick you up at seven if you're ready!_

 _Bekaaa, are you ignoring me? ):_

He called back.

"He is returned!" Timur laughed into the phone. Otabek could hear the soft _whoosh_ of cars in the background and a small crowd of people talking. "So, seven?"

"Hey," Otabek said quietly. "Actually, I'm sorry, but it's been a really long day. Why don't you guys have fun and I can meet your friends another day?"

"Aw, Beka, if you're not feeling good we can try later, but I'm not sure when I can get everyone together again and they really want to meet you," replied Timur, the giggle falling from his voice. "Besides, you need to get out, you shouldn't spend all your time locked in your room."

"I'm not sick, just tired," Otabek mumbled. He glanced in his closet and pulled out one of his few shirts that wasn't sportswear. He probably should get out for a while in a way that wasn't going for a run with Taimas. "I don't think I'll be great company tonight."

"That's okay, you can be stoic, silent Mr. Badass tonight." He could hear Timur's smile once more. "You don't talk much anyway."

 **:: :: ::**

"So you're, like, famous?"

One of Timur's friends leaned in across the table, narrowing his eyes. His name started with an _A,_ Otabek thought.

"Yeah, he is," Timur said. He rested his cheek on Otabek's shoulder. "Right, Beka?"

"I'm really not," Otabek countered, smiling at the thought. "Figure skating is pretty niche, and I haven't even won any international competitions."

"You _will,_ though," Timur whispered into his ear. "And you were in that shoe ad, you guys saw that?"

The one whose name might have started with _A_ nodded noncommittally, another girl shrugged, and the last two looked blank.

"My coach arranged that somehow," Otabek explained. "They didn't actually pay me, but I got to keep the shoes."

"Are they good shoes?" The woman to Otabek's left glanced up from her soda.

"They suck," he told her.

She grinned, and Timur let out a soft huff of breath.

 **:: :: ::**

"You didn't like them, did you?"

"They're nice, I'm just really tired."

"Yeah, of course. You just seemed bored, that's all."

"Sorry."

Timur took his hand. His fingers were warm and slightly rough with calluses.

"You know, you'd probably have more fans if you actually used social media."

"I don't like social media."

"You have Instagram, just make your account public. How will people hear about you otherwise?"

Otabek yawned.

"They'll hear about me when I'm worth hearing about," he said finally.

 **:: :: ::**

"Your coach is okay with me sitting in tomorrow?" Leo was sprawled across the sofa, absentmindedly scratching Taimas's ears. "If not, it's whatever. It's the off-season anyway."

"Nah, he invited you," said Otabek. "I think he wants gossip on your other coaches."

"Oh, well. I suspect that Emily has a secret life as a private detective, and she'll be responsible for the fall of at least five major governments. Now, I don't know Xiao Yi very well, but Guang Hong swears she's the true author of My Immortal, and even though it _sounds_ weird he does have some pretty convincing evidence-"

"Sorry, he sent me a psychic message, he says that not only are you not allowed near the rink, but we're also deporting you immediately."

"If I get deported, do I have to pay for the flight?" Leo hummed contemplatively. "Anyway, too late, I live here now. Your dad makes awesome food and your dog likes me."

They were quiet for a minute. It was easy to talk to Leo, but their silences were relaxed and unhurried.

"It's working out for you, being back in Almaty?"

"It's nice to be home," Otabek said softly. "And I think… this year's going to be different, for me. It feels different."

"Your skating looks different," Leo agreed. "You look happy with it. The choreography is more your style than before."

"It's mine." Otabek grinned. "Half of it, anyway. Timur says the better half, but he can't tell an axel from a toe loop."

Leo snorted. "Maybe he should be a judge, then, because I'm not sure they can either." He chuckled as Taimas rolled over for a belly rub. "Timur seems nice. Really proud of you."

"Yeah."

Otabek thought about the unanswered texts sitting in his inbox and tried to push away the pangs of guilt. They'd make up the time later, after Leo left.

 **:: :: ::**

The competition season started in earnest.

Otabek watched the Grand Prix events in the few minutes he could grab between training and traveling, glancing at livestreams and skimming through the highlights before falling asleep at night. He celebrated his seventeenth birthday with room service in a musty hotel room, casting an occasional glance at the medal peeking out from the carefully wrapped tissue paper – Otabek knew that he could scratch off the gold plate with a fingernail, but its simple existence gleamed brighter than he could have imagined.

Otabek counted his little victories, measured by his name inching further up in the ISU rankings, the incremental leaps of his personal best.

Off the ice, his world blurred. It seemed emptier, somehow, as if the balance of his life had been tipped so firmly towards skating that there wasn't enough color left for anything else. He found himself avoiding Timur's plans, which tended to involve dancing and parties, where Otabek was still more comfortable behind the DJ's table than in the crowd. Strangers were recognizing him more frequently from the myriad of promotional material Ali had arranged, with sports franchises and volunteer organizations, making up for the lack of government sponsorship one contract at a time. He let Timur do the talking there, and tried to fade into the background until he was yanked forward for a photograph or signature, the recipient bemused but accepting.

The Grand Prix Final drew closer.

 _Next year,_ Otabek told himself.

"Next year," he told Timur. "I don't think I'll make it to the Final, but I'm going to qualify."

"Why not, is the bad luck gonna get you?" Timur smirked at him. "Can't use that excuse forever, Beka."

"Hey, I was a kid," replied Otabek, laughing. "Besides, athletes are superstitious."

"I'm just surprised you had enough friends to lose to," said Timur, rolling his eyes. "Since you literally never go out. At least now you don't have to worry about your curse because I don't skate."

"I'll have you know that JJ sent me a picture of his new tattoo just this morning," Otabek informed him. "And his _entire_ ass, which seemed a bit unnecessary for showing off a tramp stamp."

" _You_ never send me butt pics."

"I really didn't want JJ's," Otabek pointed out. "I've seen it more than enough times already."

"Oh." Timur frowned. "Were you-"

"No, we just trained together, it's hard to avoid when you share a locker room," he said hurriedly. "Nothing like that."

Timur didn't look convinced.

"We're not even that close," Otabek continued. "We don't talk much now."

"You're lucky I'm here to drag you out," Timur said, looking relieved. "If we broke up you wouldn't have _any_ friends."

 **:: :: ::**

Otabek thought he could remember watching the Grand Prix Final. He must have, he decided, he always did, but the memories themselves felt foggy and far away. Viktor Nikiforov had won, of course. Christophe Giacometti had fallen in his free skate – no, in his short program, the fall in his free skate had been in France. Otabek recalled the flurry of anxious tweets after he limped off the ice and was swarmed by medics.

Yes, he _had_ watched, because JJ was the one standing on the podium beside Nikiforov. Otabek had called him afterwards, and the phone was answered by Isabella, who promised to pass on his congratulations.

The numb horror he'd felt as Yuuri Katsuki's free skate fell to pieces on the ice haunted him for days, chased by the green-glass stare of Yuri Plisetsky's eyes as he accepted his own medal with a scowl.

No one at the top seemed happy, Otabek thought. Viktor skated loneliness with the same blank eyes he used to portray love and passion, JJ smiled at his silver medal as if the gleam of his teeth could spark it into golden fire, and Christophe's bronze seemed dull against the new blood rushing into the rink.

Otabek wondered if they, too, left their emotions frozen on the ice, held in stasis until their return.

 **:: :: ::**

At Four Continents, Otabek took fifth.

He turned the word over in his mouth, in lieu of the weight of a medal on his fingertips. _Fifth._ It seemed, at that moment, strange that he knew the word in more than five languages, each pressing a slightly different flavor into his tongue, a different touch across his teeth. _Fifth._ In English, it sounded so close to 'first,' close enough that some accents smeared it into a generic, meaningless sameness.

In the reality that existed beyond words, beyong thought, it felt like fire – flames hot enough to burn, but unable to warm. Otabek held on nonetheless, wearing the welts and blisters of its heat as their own trophies.

He called his parents, then texted Timur.

 _Were you watching?_

 _Yeah_

 _I did it,_ Otabek said. _I'm in the top ten._

It was more than most skaters achieved in their lifetimes. Ali had tears in his eyes when Otabek stumbled into the kiss and cry, unsure of everything except that the commenters had a new tone to their voices, that his knee was throbbing and he didn't care, that it finally felt _right._

256.45.

He couldn't say what had changed, other than everything.

 _I thought you might win,_ Timur eventually replied.

Otabek typed, deleted it, typed again, and put his phone away.

 **:: :: ::**

Yuri Plisetsky was at the banquet that night, and Otabek wondered if his slim frame would be able to lift the weight of all the medals he'd accumulated.

He thought about saying hello.

 _I thought you might win._

Yuri wouldn't remember him. Otabek would be just another shadow, hanging on in the hopes that success was contagious.

Next time, he would win.

Next time, he would be someone worth remembering.


	6. Six For Hell

"Beka, are you still mad at me?"

Otabek didn't look at Timur. He looked at Timur's hands, folded loosely on the coffeeshop table, at the pinched line of his eyebrows, at the soft fold of displeasure that formed under his lower lip.

"I'm not mad," Otabek replied quietly. The sickening lurch in his stomach, the tightness of his chest, that had never been anger.

"You've been really distant lately," Timur continued, as if Otabek hadn't spoken. "I said I was sorry that upset you, but I feel like you're still taking it out on me."

"I'm not trying to, I promise." Otabek sipped the dregs of his tea, grimacing at the cold bitterness. Skating, midterms, Worlds, his mother's birthday, Timur – Otabek felt like a poorly trained juggler, his attempts at balance leaving everyone vaguely discontent. "I'm sorry. I've just been really busy."

Timur caught his expression and sighed. "I know, Beka, but we're all busy. I can't be there for you all the time if you're never there for me, especially when you keep getting mad at me and won't say why."

"I-"

"Let me talk for once, okay?" Timur ran long fingers through his hair, and held Otabek's gaze. "I care about you so much, and sometimes you make me feel like you only spend time with me because I stroke your ego. It's not fair, you know?"

Something in Otabek cracked. It wasn't the clean snap of wood, or the discrete, glittering shards of broken glass, but a more subtle fracture; bones weakening in hair-thin lines, their fragility invisible and creeping.

"I'm really sorry," he whispered, his heart caught in a frenzied pause, unsure whether it should hammer or stop completely. "I'm not- I don't-"

Timur stood up.

"Most people would say something like _I love you_ ," he said softly. His dark eyes were sad behind their glasses. He turned towards the door, but stopped when Otabek rose to follow. "I want some time by myself, Otabek. We'll work on it later, okay?"

Then, Otabek was alone.

He paid for their drinks and smiled at the waitress when she asked if he was _the figure skater._ Her answering grin snuck into his lungs, a writhing, biting thing.

The air outside nipped at Otabek's fingers as he held his phone, its screen black and dead, reflecting only a glittering display of shop lights. He should text Timur, apologize again. That was the right answer, the answer most people would know to give.

The emptiness by his side had a physical presence, a harsh shadow of absence. In Almaty – in _Kazakhstan_ – the people he spent time with were Timur's friends, his family, and his coach. The others were more than an ocean away, asleep or in class, and what would he say to them anyway?

 _Tell me it's not my fault._

 _Make me feel better._

Otabek put his phone away and walked home.

 **:: :: ::**

The ice was the same as it always was.

Moving away from Almaty would have been more difficult if it wasn't – but in each city, each country, the ice was _the ice._ What was around, who was around, none of that mattered to it. None of that mattered to _him_ , Otabek told himself, and he didn't wish for Leo's easy laugh or JJ's crowing delight to echo throughout the complex.

"Otabek, repeat that section," Ali called from the side.

He did. It had been a problem before, at the beginning of the season, but he had thought it was decent enough now.

"Okay." Ali paused, and gestured Otabek over to the barrier. "I want you to try it again, but make the first jump a quad and we'll rearrange a couple of elements if need be."

"I didn't make a mistake?"

"No, I wouldn't tell you to increase the difficulty if you had," replied Ali, frowning. "Why? You usually call your mistakes before I do."

"Nothing." Otabek released a breath he hadn't realized he was holding. "Nothing, I just- I wasn't sure."

Otabek ran the jump through his mind before starting, trying to cement them in place; he was slow to learn choreography, and found it equally difficult to forget or change it. The adjustment would raise his base score, lifting him a few precious centimeters to a placement that _mattered –_ at least, if he could pull it off. Ali must be planning to remove a quad from the first half of his free skate.

Later, he asked.

"It's your choice, but I was going to just give you another quad," came the explanation. "Thoughts?"

 _Can you do it,_ he meant.

"Okay," Otabek confirmed.

 _I'll try,_ he meant.

"Otabek." Ali hesitated. "Is something wrong? You've been quiet."

"I'm always quiet," he replied softly. "Everything is fine. I just want to skate."

He did want to skate. Otabek wanted the world to disappear into the same crystalline blur that made up the ice beneath his feet, for the constant stabbing reminders of every way he wasn't good enough fall into muted, frozen silence.

Selfish, Otabek thought, to _want_ more instead of _being_ more.

The mood followed him home, as it had trailed him everywhere for the last few days. Otabek stared at the vase of flowers resting on the kitchen table as he took a water glass out of the cabinet. The bright petals were already wilting and shriveling into tissue-paper wrinkles around the edges.

He would have to throw them out soon, and he should tell Timur, so his feelings weren't hurt to find the gift stuffed in the trash.

 _("I was harsh on you yesterday, but it was only because I care about you and I want to work things out. We can't make things work if we don't talk about problems, right, Beka?"_

 _Timur pushed the bouquet of flowers into his hands, and Otabek forced a smile. Over the next couple of days, a handful of trinkets and candies followed the flowers, flanked on both sides by sweet text messages and surprise phone calls.)_

He needed to shower and change before meeting Timur.

Instead, Otabek let his forehead rest against the cool white plastic of the refrigerator door, inspecting the smudges of fingerprints and smear of jam ( _hopefully_ jam) along the edge. He closed his eyes, then nearly concussed himself with the door as his sister walked in.

"New hobby?" Gulshat lifted an eyebrow. The lines of her face were nearly identical to his. "Or just trying it out?"

"Hmm?" He closed the fridge.

"Leaning on stuff. Sighing."

"It's popular in Canada," Otabek said, unable to muster the energy for a smirk to go with the now-rote joke.

"Glad to see you're up with the trends," replied Gulshat, grasping Otabek by the shoulders and steering him away from the fridge so she could open it. "Dad says the movie starts at five, so we should snack now and eat late."

The movie they'd planned to see, as a family, that he had completely forgotten about.

"Shit," Otabek mumbled. "I- I made other plans, I have to-"

Cancel them and ditch Timur.

"Okay, make sure you tell Dad," shrugged Gulshat.

Skip out and ditch his family.

His mistake, again.

"I said I would go," Otabek said, dimly surprised to hear his voice come out as a whisper. Everything felt heavy, and perversely, he wished it was heavier, enough to crush him to the floor. "I forgot."

"Beka?" Gulshat touched his arm, ignoring the sweat moistening his sleeve. Otabek opened his mouth to apologize, but all he could do was breathe, and the air didn't have enough _air_ in it. "Beka, it's not a big deal."

It wasn't. It shouldn't be. But…

 _I keep fucking stuff up,_ he thought, and either his sister was psychic or he said it out loud too.

"Run that by me again."

"Nothing. Sorry."

"Otabek Altin, that didn't sound like nothing."

He winced.

"I'm sorry," he repeated. "I'm just frustrated. Sorry."

Gulshat took a step back and looked him over. She had their mother's stare, piercingly intent where he and his father could generally manage nothing sterner than a glower, and for a moment Otabek had difficulty believing that he'd grown taller than her during his years away.

She leaned back against the cabinets.

"If you tell me you're having an exceptionally bad day, I'll leave you alone," Gulshat said slowly. "But you've also looked like a train wreck for the past month, so that excuse is getting a bit worn out. So, are you okay or not okay?"

Otabek thought.

He thought about how his boyfriend was coming over, and he only felt tired.

He thought about the math test next week, about the untouched study guides, and he only felt tired.

He thought about Ali's changes to his program, his lack of opinion, and Otabek felt tired.

Gulshat had her own life, her university classes and her friends. She didn't need to listen to him complain.

She was still gazing at him. The question, he realized, had already been answered.

"I'm not… great," Otabek admitted finally.

She nodded.

The doorbell rang. Timur had made the decision for him. Otabek would apologize to his father, scramble to shower and change clothes, and then get through the evening. He'd _gotten through_ a lot, recently, more than he'd actually _done._

"Tell him you don't feel up to going out," Gulshat suggested, but Otabek shook his head: Timur would talk him into it, he'd end up going, then they'd argue about his lack of enthusiasm.

Gulshat must have caught the reluctance on Otabek's face, because she grabbed him by the arm and dragged him unceremoniously into the hallway.

"Just a second," she yelled. She opened his bedroom door, shoved Otabek inside, and slammed it. "Be right there- yeah, hi, Timur, I was just about to text you!"

Her words were barely muffled by the wood, and Otabek stood frozen, listening.

"Were you?" His voice was polite, but Otabek could hear the edge of disappointment – he should have been ready to go by now. _Stop holding everyone up, jeez, Beka._ "So, is Beka-"

"Oh, he's sick," Gulshat said cheerfully. "Got home and threw up in the hallway, you know, the works."

"Um, I. Is it the flu or something?"

"Could be contagious," Gulshat continued. "I don't think Beka's up for going out, but I'm sure he'd appreciate the company."

"I, uh, can't stay, sorry. Tell him I hope he feels better, text me when he's up for it?"

"Sure thing." The lock _snicked_ and settled into place with a soft clunk. "Or I can _not_ do that," she muttered to herself.

Otabek stepped back as Gulshat shoved her way inside, holding Taimas. She pushed the dog into Otabek's arms and sat down on the end of his bed, letting her eyes wander across the messy closet and out the window.

"Pet your brother and don't look at me like that," she said finally. "Is it skating?"

He started to nod, shook his head, and eventually settled on a shrug before dropping into the desk chair with a sigh.

"Timur?"

Agreeing would have felt like a betrayal, if not a lie.

"It's everything," Otabek said quietly. The frantic desperation of a few minutes before had faded into a familiar, dull discomfort. "I'm just… having trouble keeping up. I don't want to keep disappointing everyone. It's not a big deal. Sorry."

"Mom and Dad don't really know what to do with you," Gulshat told him, though her words were addressed to the dusty carpet. "A lot of long distance parenting, and now I think they just let you do your thing because they're not sure what else to do. And they're not… great, with some stuff."

"It's not their fault," he objected, uncertain. Taimas was a warm, comforting weight in his lap. "It's-"

"When you were in America, I failed half my classes and almost got expelled for fighting," she said abruptly. "Mom and Dad didn't want to tell you because – I don't know. It would worry you, it made them feel like they were failing at being parents, whatever. I didn't tell you because you were the prodigy kid, everyone was so proud of you and I couldn't take a shower."

Otabek blinked as his world, his family, shifted slightly on its axis, casting what he knew into deep shadows and revealing harsh, glittering edges.

"Mom didn't tell me she's had depression until after they finally dragged me to a doctor." She huffed a short, frustrated breath and bit her lip. "It's genetic. Partly. She's got it, I've got it, one of her parents probably has it but who the fuck knows at this point-"

 _We speak Russian because of communism,_ Otabek remembered telling JJ, but their history came with as much silence as language.

"Anyway, from the look on your face this is brand new information, so welcome back to Kazakhstan, you have a family history of mental illness and our parents try to ignore any problems they don't know how to deal with." Gulshat was scowling, and Otabek could see the faint flush that painted her face. "Sorry. I'm- I don't know how to do this either. I just… you look like I felt. Empty. Like you're trying to care but you can't even care that you don't care."

"Yeah," Otabek murmured. "Like that."

She sighed, slow and heavy.

Silences with his family had their own texture, their own weight. They weren't easy and companionable, like with Leo, nor were they JJ's caught between the end of a sentence and the beginning of an indrawn breath.

This silence was hard and brittle. Otabek and Gulshat took a moment to examine it, hanging between them like a frozen lake, deciding which spots were safe to step onto and which would plunge them into icy darkness – the quiet was a bridge they built together, crossing to meet in the middle.

"Thank you," he said eventually.

"Timur didn't stay," Gulshat told him instead of replying, her eyes flicking across his face. "Are you okay?"

"It's been- I've been hard on him." Otabek hadn't been surprised when Timur left. It hadn't occurred to him to be surprised. "I don't know. We're fine." He could have left it there, let the flash of honesty and startled fear pass on into the fog, but instead Otabek drew a shuddering breath and continued, "I don't communicate well." _Timur says._ "I don't support him enough." _Timur says._ "I'm selfish." _Timur says._ "I don't know why he stays with me."

Timur had said that, too.

"According to him," Gulshat muttered, biting the words from the air. "He told you that?"

"It's not his fault."

"Beka," she hissed. "Does he say that to you? Yes or no."

 _No,_ he wanted to reply.

"Yes." The admission stung like a knife. Otabek tried to staunch the bleeding. "But he doesn't- it's not-"

Too late.

"Maybe you turn into an asshole the minute you step outside, and you're just pretending to fall all over yourself to make him happy," she said, her voice cold enough to burn. "But it sounds like he's an abusive shithead."


	7. Seven For A Secret, Never To Tell

"That's not- no," said Otabek, hearing and hating the hoarseness in his voice, the pause before his reply. He thought back to Timur's words, the undercurrent of fear – the search for reassurance that Otabek couldn't, or wouldn't, give. "He's not… he never means to hurt me, we just argue sometimes. That's all."

"And I bet you're never the one to start them," Gulshat shot back. Her words were steady, but her hands were shaking where they gripped the edge of the mattress.

Taimas, still curled up on Otabek's lap, looked between them and whined softly with a nervous wag of his tail. He didn't like fights of any caliber, and wasn't used to them – it was undeniably true that the Altin family preferred to ignore problems rather than confront them. Otabek pushed that thought from his mind and rubbed the wiry fur of Taimas's chin.

"We both make mistakes," he said, as firmly as he could. If his sister understood, if she could see into Otabek's mind, she'd know to be angry with him as well. _You only spend time with me because I stroke your ego._ "Thank you, but it's not like that."

Otabek waited for Gulshat to lecture him, to tell him he was an idiot and storm out.

She looked at him. The silence didn't feel any different than before.

"Does he make you happy?" she asked quietly.

Otabek's mouth filled with ash. His answer died on his tongue, burned and buried.

"If you broke up, what would you feel?"

The moment crept forward and surrounded Otabek like a dream, and he watched his mind lift its head, inspecting the idea. He tried to pull back, but it was too late.

 _Lonely,_ it whispered. _Afraid. Guilty. It would be your fault._

The sensation wasn't unfamiliar, and he fell deeper, into -

"Nothing," he answered at last. "I don't feel anything, I don't _care,_ isn't that what you said it's like?"

"Yeah," she sighed. "That doesn't mean it's right to keep going."

 **:: :: ::**

Another competition, in another city whose name Otabek barely bothered to take note of – he would be gone in a few days, after all, and the ice was the same.

Winning, however, was not the same. Otabek watched his coach from the corner of his eye, promising himself that _that_ discussion could happen once he was holding tangible proof. It was easier not to ask whether a gold medal would prove to Ali that he could still skate, still win, or to reassure Otabek himself that there was a reason for continuing besides habit.

Otabek carved his worries into the ice as if the grooves left by his skates could channel the emotional runoff, and in those few minutes of flight, he understood why his sister fought. The emptiness he'd been ignoring for months, that had dogged his steps for years, wasn't empty – it was populated with shadow-faced monsters that pulled at him with leaden claws.

They spoke, too, and it was often Timur's voice that fell from their lips.

Other times, it would have been easier if it was.

 _You're coming tonight, right?_

Otabek opened the text and glanced around the hotel room. The next day was Timur's birthday, which had approached with an increasing sense of unease.

 _No, I'm in Luxembourg, sorry._

 _You have a competition? Why didn't you tell me?_

Otabek started to type _I'm sorry_ – his phone filled in the phrase, as used to the words as he was – and stopped. He _had_ told Timur. And, due to an unexamined impulse that may have been prompted by the memory of Gulshat's worried gaze, he could be sure.

 _I did,_ he replied instead. _Sorry, I know my schedule is confusing right now._

 _No you didn't, you promised me you were coming._

The future split into two paths in front of Otabek. One was easy in its familiarity. It didn't involve fighting, or uncertainty, or change.

However, the hum of adrenaline was still rushing through Otabek's veins, buoyed by the memory of ice under his feet and the judges' appraising frowns. Or maybe it was the numbness that cushioned him, a resurgence of childish certainty that something couldn't cause pain if it couldn't be seen.

He sent a screenshot instead of apologizing, letting the stark letters of old text messages speak for him.

This time, the silence felt like a roller coaster, just cresting the peak of a hill.

It began to slip down, and Otabek realized that _no,_ this was why Gulshat fought.

 _You could have just said that. I forgot, okay, you don't have to make a big deal out of it._

He waited.

 _Why are you screenshotting our texts? Have you been doing this the whole time, because that's really creepy and unfair._

 _Were you waiting for me to make a mistake?_

 _I don't understand why you have to make everything so difficult, Otabek._

 _You could have just said something._

 _Now I'm going to feel like shit all night. Happy birthday to me._

Otabek's stomach gave a sickening twist. It was the same sense of creeping nausea he'd felt as a child, when he broke his wrist at playground in the park. Petty. Manipulative. He thought about his sister's words and fought back a flash of anger. He'd been prodding, testing, trying to prove Gulshat wrong – that would irritate anyone.

He dropped the phone onto the starch-stiff hotel sheets. The ghosts of fingerprints smeared matte patches across the screen, grubby against the crisp white pillowcase. Before it could buzz again, Otabek picked it up and turned the phone off, tossing it into the half-unpacked suitcase for good measure.

 **:: :: ::**

 _I'm not happy._

Otabek nudged the shower hotter, as if it could burn the words from his mind.

 _I don't know_ _if it's me._

The hotel shampoo was labeled 'lemongrass,' but it smelled like furniture polish.

 _I don't love him,_ Otabek thought. He waited for some part of him to argue, but found only the dull throb of acceptance. He was… fond, he decided. He liked not being alone. He enjoyed being wanted. He couldn't even deny that he loved the scattered praise, the moment of warmth before the backhanded compliment's bitter aftertaste rose up on his tongue – but it wasn't love. Timur knew it, too. It was the reason he would never let go.

He stepped out from under the scalding spray. There was no sense in wasting water just to mope.

His cell phone, left to hibernate in its messy pile of luggage, was nevertheless a nagging presence in the corner of Otabek's mind as he tried to sleep. As the minutes and then hours passed, its silent judgment filled the room.

At two in the morning, Otabek dragged himself out of bed and turned it back on. He narrowed his eyes, which were dry and heavy with exhaustion, against the sudden, blinding glow. A handful of notifications trickled in – nothing urgent, and nothing from Timur.

 _That was rude of me,_ Otabek texted. _I'm sorry._

It was just past seven in Almaty, too late to still be awake and much too early to rise, but Otabek could breath once more. He finally slept.

 **:: :: ::**

The hotel alarm clock roused him from tense, twisting dreams that felt more exhausting than if he hadn't slept at all. Unfortunately, it wasn't the alarm he'd planned to wake him, but the backup he always set just in case.

Panic swept the drowsiness from his mind, and Otabek ran to the lobby to meet his coach. He skidded to a halt by the front desk, wide-eyed and twenty minutes late for training. It wasn't a competition day for him – the men's free skate wouldn't take place for another two days – and Otabek thanked the universe for small mercies.

"Sorry," he stuttered. "I- sorry."

Ali looked him up and down. "Party too hard, Otabek?"

"No! No, I just overslept, I'm really sorry." His face burned, and he wondered if his eyes were as red as his cheeks. _Great job proving I can still keep up with skating._ Perfect. "I wasn't-"

"I know," Ali replied, frowning. "That was a joke. Is everything okay?"

"Fine," mumbled Otabek. His fingers twitched toward the phone in his pocket. In the morning's rush, he hadn't looked at it since sending the text several hours before.

Why had he apologized? Why had he apologized _like that?_

During the taxi ride to the local rink where they'd booked practice time, Otabek finally managed to glance at the screen.

Nothing.

Had it sent? Otabek blinked, bemused: _read 4:52 am._

The cold, dry air of the rink did its best to blow away his foggy thoughts, but he needed the clean, pure focus of skating. Nothing, and no one, could follow him onto the-

"- Otabek!" Ali tapped his shoulder and Otabek started, nearly knocking his half-unzipped duffel bag off the bench. "Where is your head?"

"Just tired. I'll be fine after I warm up."

Ali sighed. "You're not getting on the ice today, Otabek."

"What?" Otabek breathed. "I need to practice."

"You haven't heard a word I've said today," he replied curtly. "I asked if you got breakfast, if you're sore from that fall yesterday, whether you want to try the modifications to your free skate or play it safe, and the only answers I've gotten have been _okay_ or _good._ "

"I didn't mean to ignore you," Otabek said desperately. The ice, mere meters away, was disappearing into the distance. "I'll pay attention, it's-"

Ali cut him off. "I'm not punishing you, I'm telling you that you're in no shape to skate safely! Take a nap, do your stretches, go for a run, and _if_ you can focus tomorrow, you can practice."

 _Like you're trying to care but you just feel… empty._

 _Tomorrow,_ Otabek thought. What would tomorrow change? Ali had finally seen how much of a mess he was. One day's ban from the rink wasn't unusual, but they couldn't keep doing this, _he_ couldn't keep doing this.

"What if you don't let me skate tomorrow?"

"Then we'll try to get extra time to warm up before the free skate," said Ali with a shrug.

"And if-"

"Then you're not competing." The thin tracery of laugh lines around his hard gaze looked painted on. "I don't want to interfere with your personal life, but I'm your coach. If something starts to interfere with your skating, I need to know."

"It's- I-" Otabek had never been truly fond of words. It took time to line them up and make them right, but by the time he was satisfied, the moment had passed. _This_ moment, however, stubbornly hung between them. "I'm-"

His eyes were wet. Otabek stared up at the ceiling, silently cursing himself, and followed blindly as Ali took his elbow and led him into the empty hallway. He didn't look at his coach as he forced himself to breathe.

Stoic. Even the judges called him intense and determined when they were being nice, and robotic when they weren't. Blank. Cold. Otabek Altin, the emotionless wonder boy. At some point, he'd started to believe them. He caught Ali's discomfited expression from the corner of his eye, bit down on the inside of his lip, and didn't step away from the hand that rested hesitantly on his shoulder.

And slowly, not bothering to lift his voice from its hoarse monotone, he explained.

"Okay," Ali said, his eyebrows furrowed as he looked down at Otabek. "You were waiting until after the competition to tell me, because…"

"If I did well." Otabek paused, his eyes falling to the grubby tiled floor. "You'd know I- that it wouldn't interfere with skating. Today is… it won't be like today."

"Why tell me?" Ali's tone was uncertain and questioning, but not accusatory. It was better than the flat out denial Otabek had been preparing himself for, a glare of disgust and dismissive _you're not crazy, get over it._ "It seems a little, um, personal."

"I- I'll probably have to take medicine for a while," Otabek mumbled. He caught his lip between his teeth once more and tasted blood. "It's, the ISU allows it, I checked, but I'll have to report it."

"Medicine?"

"Not until the season is over," replied Otabek, trying to reassure them both. "It's… there aren't a lot of side effects, I won't turn into a zombie, but I- I don't want to make any big changes until after Worlds."

"You can manage until then?" Ali sighed as Otabek nodded silently, all too aware of the heat of unshed tears behind his eyes. "Otabek, will you be able to handle the World Championships? You've competed there as a junior, but the senior levels-"

Two weeks to pull himself together for the most important event of the year, two weeks to get through.

"Yes." It came out more forcefully than he intended, and they both jumped. "Today is something else. It's not skating. I'm going to deal with it."

It was easier, when he put it that way – when it became a choice weighted against skating.

"Can I do anything?" The question caught him off guard. Ali raised an eyebrow. "Besides letting you on the ice today. That's still a no."

"Let me skate tomorrow," Otabek told him. "If you don't think I can concentrate, I'll just loop around the rink, nothing difficult, I just- I need to."

"We'll see," replied Ali, after a moment. "Deal with your problem and we'll see."

 **:: :: ::**

"Hi," said Otabek, pressing the phone to his ear. "Hi, it's- it's me."

"Beka, hey."

"Was your party fun?" Otabek closed his eyes as the words slipped past his lips.

"Yeah, it was great! Too bad you couldn't come," said Timur. "Though I guess you're not great at parties, so it worked out. What's up?"

"I, um, I just. I needed to." His tongue stumbled, and his mind offered no help. "I can't date right now. I'm sorry."

"What?" Timur laughed. "You're not breaking up with me, Beka."

"I'm sorry," he repeated.

"Is this because we argued yesterday? Otabek, you need to stop being so sensitive." The sound of his full name cracked over the line like a whip. He didn't reply. "Beka, you're not serious, are you? It's my birthday."

"I-"

"For fuck's sake, can't you ever do anything except apologize? You don't want to do this, we both know that."

Otabek pressed the edge of his thumbnail into the soft skin of his inner wrist, increasing the pressure until its bite stung like a knife.

"Beka, come on, we can fix this," Timur pleaded. "You're overreacting, we just need to talk."

It wasn't the beauty of a siren's song that drew sailors to their deaths, Otabek realized – it was their promises.

"Goodbye," he forced out, the last breath in his lungs before they filled with water. "Goodbye."

He hung up and stared at the phone in his hand. It looked back at him, the black, unseeing eye reflecting his own blank face.

 _Empty,_ he thought.

It buzzed, and he read the messages half-displayed on the lock screen without opening them.

 _you're making a mistake_

 _you'll be crawling back by next week_

 _no one else is going to date you_

 _you don't even have any friends_

Otabek turned it off.

 _It's fine,_ he told himself as he grabbed his keycard and left the room. _I have to do this, I'm right, it's better for both of us._

He knocked on Ali's door, offering a silent prayer that his coach had stayed true to routine and would still be in.

"Otabek?" Ali lifted a hand – _just a minute_ – and ended his own call. "I have to go, I'll call you back in a minute."

Otabek held out his phone. They both stared at it.

"Can you keep this until the competition is over?" Otabek asked, breaking the silence.

"Uh, sure." Ali took it, then hesitated. "Don't you need it?"

"No," said Otabek. "I dealt with it."

Even to his own ears, he sounded cold and uncaring.

 _It's over,_ he told himself. _It doesn't matter if it's my fault or not, if it's a mistake, it's over._


	8. Eight For A Wish

"Beks! Hey, Beks!" JJ's voice rang out across the lobby. Otabek looked up from the stack of paperwork, rolling his shoulders to relieve the post-travel stiffness. "Man, when did you get in?"

"Last night," said Otabek, after a moment's jetlagged thought. "Late. Late-ish."

"Aw, you should have called me," replied JJ, dropping his hand onto Otabek's shoulder. Otabek's back stiffened for a moment. "Belle and I were out getting drinks."

"I was traveling for almost thirty hours." He bit his lip, surprised by the hint of harshness in his voice. Had JJ noticed? Was that a flash of hurt in his eyes, or was Otabek imagining it? He forced a smile. "You would have had to drag my unconscious body around Boston."

JJ's omnipresent grin flickered back to its normal brightness – if it had even dimmed in the first place – and Otabek sighed. The momentary tension had drained what was left of his energy, which was rendered as fragile as butterfly wings even before arriving for Worlds.

"You're done with the registration forms?" Otabek asked, searching for an easy topic.

"Yeah, off to meet Belle for brunch," agreed JJ. "You want to join us?"

"No thanks. I'll see you later, though."

"Ah, come on, Beks," said JJ, widening his eyes into an exaggerated pout. His promise ring gleamed in the fluorescent light. "You've been MIA since leaving Canada, I've gotta tell you about Toronto, and _you_ need to spill the details on your hot celebrity life, dude. That guy who's always in your photos, you two are-"

"No," Otabek said sharply, cutting him off. "We're not. Text me this evening, if you're not busy."

JJ laughed and clapped him on the back. "Sure, Beks, you go nap out your jetlag grumpiness. I'll catch you later."

As JJ wandered off, Otabek pressed his fingertips into his temples to ward off the flash of regret and regarded the stack of paperwork. It seemed to have multiplied while he was distracted, and the pen was heavy and awkward in his hand.

His friendship with JJ had never been as easy or relaxed as time with Leo, but the distance had still been a pounding ache he could never quite suppress even as he tried to ignore it. _We're both busy,_ he'd told himself, flinching under the weaponized jealousy of Timur's gaze. _My life isn't exciting enough to talk about anyway._

It was a sensation he still couldn't shake. Now, faced with JJ's constant smile, the rapid stream of words he never had to think about or stumble through, the swagger that passed as confidence, Otabek felt like a shadow. His own thoughts were slow and disjointed when they came, catching in his throat as he spoke, and his very skin was etched with invisible fault lines. JJ was growing, but Otabek was ready to shatter.

 _Just a few more days,_ he thought. A few more days, and then he'd be able to start gluing the pieces of himself back together.

 **:: :: ::**

After a timeless eternity, Otabek signed his name a final time and picked up his phone, steeling himself before glancing at the screen to check the time. Its weight in his palm was alien and strange, unfamiliar after two weeks in his sister's custody. Gulshat was the one who had blocked Timur's number when Otabek's shaking fingers faltered – and, over the following days, deleted the string of texts from borrowed phones.

"I think it might be best to change your number, Beka," she told him. Though her voice was steady, her eyes were wet and a red flush of anger stained her cheeks and neck. "Or let me murder him. Do you think Dad would help me hide a body?"

"No, he's got the nonviolent religion thing," Otabek replied. He didn't ask what the messages had said, and she didn't tell him. "Mom, maybe."

He shook his head when she tried to hand the phone back. It went into her desk drawer once more, new number and all.

"At least let me beat him up a little," Gulshat said the next day, when Otabek came home from practice. "Some broken bones, nothing serious."

This time, her words trembled with a low, brittle energy that matched the demanding hum that throbbed in the base of Otabek's skull, and a silent question passed between them.

"He called the apartment," she muttered. "I told him to piss off, but if it rings, don't answer."

Otabek's heart stuttered in his chest. "You don't have to deal with this for me," he said, speaking over the pounding in his chest. "You've done enough already. It's my fault anyway, I can handle it."

 _Can you?_ Doubt was thick in the air, but Gulshat didn't give it a voice.

"Beka, you don't have to." She sat down at the kitchen table and looked away. "Look, if I'd gotten my shit together, maybe you wouldn't have had to at all. Please don't argue," Gulshat added, when he opened his mouth. "You've been back for almost a year, and I knew from the beginning that something seemed off. I wasn't sure, I didn't know what to say, so I just left it. Then _he_ showed up, and I heard how he'd make jokes about you and you smiled like you didn't know what else to do, but I never thought it was serious, I told myself it wasn't my business. Any fucking day, I could have tried to talk to you. I knew Mom and Dad weren't going to. I damn well _knew_ something was wrong, for months, and I didn't even ask if you were okay until… So yeah. If you ask me to butt out, I will, but I don't _want_ you to have to deal with this shit at all."

Otabek wondered if someone else would have known what to say, if he was alone in his speechlessness. Instead, he waited for Gulshat to stand up before pulling her into a stiff hug. Though they were family, he couldn't remember their last embrace – before he left Kazakhstan, probably.

"I forgot how to be a sister," she admitted softly.

"You're still my favorite sister," he said, and stepped back. "Sorry, I smell like sweat. Please don't beat anyone up, you're not a minor and it would suck if you got arrested again."

Gulshat stuck out her tongue.

"I was _not_ arrested, I was escorted home. With prejudice."

She gave the phone back before he left for the airport.

"Throw it out the window if you have to," she told him. "Besides, Americans just write their texts on bullets and shoot it at whoever they're talking to, right? So you don't even need a phone."

 **:: :: ::**

"Your short program certainly was striking, Mr. Altin," commented Alain Leroy. He sipped his wine, giving no hint as to whether _striking_ was positive or not. "Very unique."

"Thank you," Otabek replied. He eyed the half-empty bottle of wine, debating whether or not he would be allowed to snatch it and retreat under the table before glancing over at Ali, who was deep in discussion with Nathalie and unlikely to come to the rescue. "I have enjoyed skating it this season."

JJ leaned across to pick up the bread basket. "I thought you'd find the music boring, Beks, you never wanted to skate to anything classical before." He selected a roll, placed it on Isabella's plate, and buttered it.

"Well, JJ, you know the ISU judges," Alain cut in with a laugh. "You can't give them anything _too_ interesting."

"It was composed by Evgeniy Brusilovsky. One of the most famous musicians in Kazakh history," he added, before the lack of recognition crossed their faces. "I was very excited to use it in my program. It wasn't-" one of the handful of French and Russian works that were ubiquitous across the ice- "an option I was offered before."

"So, Otabek," Alain continued. "Are you here with anyone other than your coach?"

"No." His mouth was empty, ashy – he waited in silence, hoping for a reprieve.

"I can't wait to show you my music for next season," JJ said, and Otabek was grateful even as JJ tore off a piece of the bread and lifted it to Isabella's lips. She rolled her eyes at Otabek and took it delicately, careful not to smudge her lipstick on JJ's fingertips. Otabek wondered how much of the wine was left, or if he could find a new bottle. "Mama and Papa were choreographing for a movie, and when we were in Hollywood I met this band at a party and we really hit it off. They're writing me a song and I just have the demo version now, but it's _seriously_ amazing. You'll love it. Here, let me show you-"

"After dinner, JJ," interrupted Isabella. She smiled fondly. "Everyone will have it memorized soon enough, don't spoil the surprise."

"I want to post it after I win Worlds!" He turned to Otabek, grinning. "What do you think, Beks, is this the year I take Nikiforov down?"

 _No,_ thought Otabek, but he stayed silent. Nikiforov's short program score was as inhuman as the blank mask of his face when he took his bow. It would be close to a miracle for anyone to come close to Giacometti or Popovich, let alone slip into first place.

He tried to picture himself on the podium, but even in his own mind, he could feel JJ on his left, looking down at Otabek's silver medal with an ecstatic smile. A lucky charm, a spotlight – he'd never surpassed JJ before, and it was, too, a bitter relief that Leo wasn't at Worlds. Even if the old guard had been absent, Otabek might as well have _been_ the podium.

"I'll take out Nikiforov and you work on Christophe, right, Beks? We'll knock 'em right off the ice." JJ must have seen something in Otabek's face, because he winked and added, "Don't frown like that, you even had _me_ a little worried at Four Continents this year. You know, just a little. No one can dethrone King JJ."

"We'll see about that," replied Otabek. The words sounded hollow in his ears, and he lifted an eyebrow to dull their edge, to dull his own ambition.

JJ's smile flickered, and he sat up straighter.

 **:: :: ::**

"My group goes out for warm-ups next," said JJ, his voice low. Otabek looked up from his stretch, wincing at a twinge in the back of his thigh, and took in the waxy sheen of his friend's face. "Ten minutes."

Otabek did his best to force an encouraging smile onto his face, but JJ shifted and adjusted his jacket. He cleared his throat.

"I'm sure you'll do great," he tried. Each sound drew on stores of energy that were quickly being depleted. Every breath was numbered, a countdown, and Otabek could no longer care what it was they were counting down to. JJ's expression didn't clear. "Your short program went really well."

It had been fractions of a point over Otabek's own, close enough to give him a moment of hope, a backdrop of disappointment.

"Beks, can you- you know, your luck thing." JJ toed the edge of the exercise mat. "Could you?"

A twist of nausea. Otabek looked down at the floor to hide the curl of anger in his lips – JJ, of all people, asking for more luck like he was begging for sand on a beach, like Otabek could bestow victory at will instead of hemorrhaging his own chance to win. From the corner of his eye, he could see Isabella standing in the doorway.

"I'm not lucky," Otabek replied, rising slowly to his feet. At seventeen, his knees clicked like a pensioner's. "JJ, that's- it wasn't serious, we were just playing cards."

"You never said it wasn't real." JJ put his hands in his pockets and rocked onto his toes. "It felt pretty real to me, Beks. I don't get it, but I'm telling you it's a thing."

"I never said it was real, either," sighed Otabek, swallowing the taste of copper on his tongue. "JJ, you'll do fine, even if I could give you luck, you don't need it."

Neither moved. JJ would have to leave for the rink in a minute.

"C'mon, Otabek, please. Even if it's a joke to you, I-" His tone dropped to a whisper. "Everyone's counting on me, my parents, Belle is here, I have actual _fans_ in the audience and if I mess up, it'll be… I have to win."

"We all want to win." It took the rest of Otabek's strength to stop the words from splintering. "Maybe- maybe this time I want to keep my luck."

"But you're not-" JJ cut himself off, but they both heard the rest of his thought.

"I'm not going to win?"

"I didn't mean that."

"You've always beaten me. Every single time." Otabek closed his eyes and turned away. "Please don't ask me to wish you luck doing it."

The loudspeaker in the corner hissed to life behind him. Otabek thought it sounded like a snake as it spat, _group two, please assemble by the west entrance, group two-_

When he looked back, JJ was gone.

 **:: :: ::**

JJ's free skate didn't suffer as a result of Otabek's hesitation. He watched without emotion as the pixelated form danced across the screen set into the far wall.

"How are you doing, Beka?" Ali stepped up beside him, observing without commentary as Georgi Popovich's hand brushed the ice.

"Fine," he mumbled. It was his group up next, where he would skate in front of the largest audience he'd ever faced – skate, but not well enough, he would never be good enough, who hadn't told him that a thousand times already- "I'll get through it."

"I'm proud of you," Ali said, touching Otabek's shoulder. "Even with… everything, you've had an amazing season." When Otabek didn't reply, he continued, "And I hope you know how much it means to people back home, to see you on this ice."

 _More than it should,_ thought Otabek. _They should be watching someone who's going somewhere._

"Thank you," he said.

Ali smiled. Otabek twitched his numb lips.

"They're going to call us in a minute. Stretched out?"

He nodded. As they walked through the hallways, the shiny tiled floor slipped under his feet like sand, sliding and shifting under Otabek's skate guards. The gleam of fluorescent light rippled and sparkled in front of him. It was almost here; it was almost over.

He was so tired.

Finally, _finally,_ with his blades biting into the ice and the first strains of music floating through the air, Otabek looked into the sea of faces that lurked in the darkness. Maybe he didn't have enough to give, the empty crevice of his soul had been mined to dust already, but he grasped at the rubble of his exhausted heart and pretended that the pebbles resting in his palms were diamonds.

 **:: :: ::**

Ali leaned forward as the score was announced, but Otabek could barely muster the willpower to lift his head. The stuffed bear in his arms sat at attention as he struggled to focus his blurring eyes.

 _"Beka,"_ Ali breathed. "Otabek, look."

The numbers didn't make sense. He blinked, waiting for them to resolve into something more sensible, for an announcer to apologize for their mistake and correct it.

The screen glowed steadily, displaying a list of names – _his_ name, his flag, his score, proudly perched at the top. The red maple leaf below Kazakhstan's sun trailed two and a half points behind, at a right angle to reality.

"There's still the last group," Otabek mumbled through his shock. "I-"

Viktor Nikiforov and Christophe Giacometti. Four others. He wasn't going to win.

His name above JJ's. The world was shifting, realigning, and Otabek wondered which corners would tear under the stress of change.

 **:: :: ::**

The spotlights were blinding. Otabek tried to tell himself that they were no brighter than anywhere else, no hotter than those that had sought him out at the countless regional competitions in which he'd clutched the fool's gold of his medal, but his eyes continued to water.

To his right, Viktor Nikiforov smiled beatifically at the cheering crowd, and no emotion washed through his pale eyes. He thought he glimpsed JJ's face at the edge of the darkness, but the shifting mass of people consumed any details like a fading mirage.

Otabek's impossible bronze medal throbbed against his chest, a second heart waiting for the first to cease and still and step aside.

As if in a dream, a row of reporters marched up, armed with cameras and questions. The ice was gone, though Otabek couldn't quite remember leaving the rink. He rested his elbows on the white satin tablecloth and gritted his teeth against the flash bulbs.

Viktor Nikiforov, living legend, turned to Otabek once the journalists had been lured from their prey.

"Congratulations," Viktor said, offering a hand to shake. He wore his gold medal as casually as a bathrobe, or a trinket left over from a party – without meaning, without value. Otabek glanced at the proffered hand. A year ago, that hand held a spit-covered egg, courtesy of Yuri Plisetsky. He took it, letting Viktor's long fingers wrap around his own. "How does it feel?"

They faced each other, two empty mirrors reflecting into infinity.

"It's… a surprise," Otabek replied.

Viktor quirked an eyebrow and curved his lips into a doll's porcelain smile. "Is it?"

Otabek didn't have an answer, but it wasn't really a question.

"It's- it's been, um, an honor to skate with you this week, Mr. Nikiforov," Otabek said instead. Too formal, too awkward, too stiff, but they were two mannequins in a scene of someone else's devising.

"Ah, that's where you're wrong, Otabek." Viktor reached across the table and plucked his name card from the edge, turning it around for Otabek to read. "This is Victor Niliforv's victory, and I appear to have stumbled in by mistake. I'm sure he'll return soon."

Somehow, it didn't sound like a joke any more than his question had been a question, so Otabek didn't attempt to laugh. He thought about the intern who would be inevitably fired – perhaps from a cannon – for the misspelling.

"I'm very excited to see your programs next season," he managed at last. "I'm- I'm looking forward to it."

"Yes," Viktor said quietly, and Otabek could see the remnants of interest melting from his eyes. "Yes, I would like to surprise you all."

Viktor drifted away, leaving Otabek starstruck and unsettled when Ali came forward to collect him.

"We'll run through your exhibition program," decided Ali. "After you've had a chance to rest, before dinner. Sound good?"

"Yes," agreed Otabek. It was almost finished. He was almost done.

The electricity of change that had hung in the air only an hour before was nothing more than a spark, and his bronze medal hung around Otabek's neck like a chain. He tried to remember when dreams of victory had tasted of freedom, and wondered how Yuri Plisetsky could fly with so much gold dragging him back down to earth – or maybe he, like Viktor, like Otabek, had hollowed out his soul to make room for success.

 **:: :: ::**

"Uh, congrats. You did it." JJ's gaze was fixed on Otabek's shoulder. "Great job, Otabek."

Otabek thought about a younger JJ crashing into his side in the locker room, laughing and beaming. Instead, he accepted yet another handshake, and the distance it put between them.

"Thanks." Otabek hesitated as JJ pulled back. "Do you… do you want to get dinner with us tonight?"

For the first time in his memory, JJ's grin failed. "I- we already have plans." Beside him, Isabella's eyeliner curved into brutally sharp points, which softened against the hardness in her eyes. "Thanks, though."

"Right. See you another time, then."

JJ waved goodbye.

Friendly competition was only friendly when it wasn't really a competition, Otabek had decided years ago, but he hadn't thought about how the balance would shift.

 **:: :: ::**

Spring in Almaty was chilly and dry, without the turbulent storms that whipped through Montreal when the snow began to melt, but the frozen ground began to soften nevertheless.

Otabek let life carry him along instead of struggling against its current – Taimas leapt and barked when Otabek picked up his leash in the morning, and Otabek became adept at dodging the handful of starry-eyed passersby whose faces brightened when he passed by. The light off-season training and free evenings showed in his schoolwork, and his grades lifted from passable to decent. Otabek wouldn't be graduating early, but he wouldn't graduate late, either.

A handful of doctors took turns humming and frowning over his career, his social life, his sleep schedule, and his genetics. After several weeks of psychological prodding, Otabek sat in a cramped office talking to a man with a slow smile and a quick mind. His sister had recommended him, as fervently as she regarded anything and anyone – _he's not an idiot,_ she told him. _We got along._

He was sent home with a weekly appointment, his half-filled journal, and a blister pack of small white pills.

And somehow, despite the lingering chill, trees began to stretch their roots under the dry soil.

 **:: :: ::**

"- and okay, I'm not easy to surprise, but when Beka dumped out an entire wallet of fake IDs, I cussed in _Christian,_ " Gulshat exclaimed, waving her drink. "Do you know how much it takes to make me blaspheme someone else's religion? It's a lot."

Her friends – _their_ friends – laughed. Makpal, a girl with large glasses and close-cropped pink hair, turned to Otabek.

"So were you two coordinating or what?"

"As far as I knew, the peak of my sister's mischief was making rude faces at her university applications," replied Otabek. Gulshat made a rude gesture at him. "I had no idea she was such a delinquent. Horrifying, really."

"Could you get us fakes?" A guy – Makpal's brother Akan – tipped his head. "I mean, do you know how?"

"Yeah." Otabek smiled, no more than a twitch of his lip, but the boy blushed and grinned back at him, before hiding his face behind a drink. "For Canada."

He was rewarded with a snort and a barely contained spray of the orange cocktail. Makpal thumped Akan on the back as he choked and giggled; over their heads, Gulshat winked at him.

Later that night, Otabek knew, he would offer to walk Akan home. He would explain that he wasn't looking for a relationship, not even a date, but kisses could be just as soft without commitment.

"I'd like to buy some maple syrup, eh," someone called across the room. He tried not to think about how JJ's expression would twist into amused offense. "Shit, Beka, your sister had us believing you were a wunderkind who tucked in your shirt every day. She's been holding out on us."

"We need to get _you_ a new ID so you can DJ the clubs around here," Makpal added. "If I hear anymore Europop top 40 I'm going to scream."

Otabek leaned back into the sofa. "I do have a gig next weekend, actually," he told them. The room fell silent. "Uptown." He paused. "At the nursing home."

He dodged the empty bottle Gulshat lobbed at his head.

 **:: :: ::**

"I can't believe we never saw each other around before," Akan said quietly, stepping into the glow of a streetlamp. "Well, I guess we did, but we never talked. You always seemed pretty quiet."

"It was a long year," replied Otabek, after a moment's silence.

"One of those?"

"Yes. One of those."

"This year too?"

"Not as much," he said slowly, watching the moon's slow ascent over the city. The stars were invisible behind Almaty's glow. "Getting better."

 **:: :: ::**

Ali propped his elbows on the side of the rink and buried his face in his hands.

"Beka, we can switch up your jumps." He stopped and sighed. " _If_ you let that costume go."

Otabek frowned. "I like that costume."

In fact, he liked the dawning horror on the coach's face as the sketch was revealed.

"It looks like a curtain. From the eighties. Not even a _nice_ one," Ali complained. "It has _gold velvet._ "

"It's high fashion."

Ali lifted his face to the ceiling and his lips moved in a silent prayer. "Okay, Otabek, funny. Which one do you really want?"

"The first one," he said.

"The pirate one." Ali closed his eyes. "If you're joking, tell me now."

"The first one," Otabek repeated. It wasn't, strictly, beautiful, and it was out of place among the sleek glimmer of the other skaters – just like he was, he thought.

"You were easier to coach when you were depressed all the time. Didn't have all this attitude." Ali gave in with a shrug and a sigh, but his expression was gentle. There were days when Otabek did his best to follow routine, piloting a body that was leaden, numb, wrapped in fog. He walked at the edge of a cliff, trying not to slip, always half-convinced that each dip in the path was a landslide. "Doing okay?"

Otabek nodded. "Doing okay," he agreed.

 **:: :: ::**

Otabek skimmed through the Grand Prix assignments with a sense of foreboding. He didn't want to skate against JJ again, not before he had to – they hadn't spoken since Worlds, beyond a few stilted text messages. When the inevitable competition came, one of them would win, the other would lose, and Otabek wasn't sure if the frayed threads of their friendship would survive either way.

He was granted a brief reprieve. JJ would be going to Canada and Russia for his qualifiers, while Otabek was assigned to the NHK Trophy and Skate America. They wouldn't meet until the Final, if both even managed to qualify. It was enough time for the uncomfortable tension between them to calm.

Leo, however, would be competing in America too. Otabek smiled despite his misgivings, despite his luck, which Leo had never asked to share, and one lost place wouldn't necessarily cost him the final. They hadn't met in person since his visit to Almaty the year before.

In Japan, he claimed gold, and he returned from the US with both a silver medal and an almost-guaranteed ticket to Barcelona – and, in addition, an unstrained friendship.

From a distance, he watched Yuri Plisetsky carve his own path in the senior division, and thought back to the dance class four years ago. Otabek had told himself they were the same, looking out from behind his thirteen-year-old's ego, that they both knew how to fight. But he hadn't, not then, not yet, and the steel in Yuri's bright eyes was a mystery.

He understood it a little better now.

 **:: :: ::**

Barcelona didn't feel new, though Otabek got lost several times in its winding streets. His first Grand Prix series, his first Final, was full of faces that had long been familiar to him, even though some of the roles had shifted.

Socializing, however, was not part of Otabek's plan. The pre-competition stress had built to nearly unbearable levels, as expected for an event so many months in the making. Otabek had only spoken to Christophe Giacometti in passing, and shied away from JJ's anxious bluster.

He left his hotel room and headed out, hoping to escape without notice, and walked into the lobby and the middle of an argument.

A few meters in front of him stood Yuri Plisetsky, who was shouting at JJ and wearing a leopard print jacket and dark circles under his eyes – he must have just arrived. Someone was shepherding a few young girls out of the hotel.

"Hey now, we're all friends here, aren't we?" JJ grinned, and Yuri flushed scarlet with rage.

Otabek thought about turning around and ordering room service.

"Otabek! Going out?"

He sighed and stopped to look at JJ, whose smile was as wide as ever.

"Just getting some food," Otabek told him. Now, maybe, would be a good chance to smooth things over between them.

"Going out to eat alone? Still as odd as ever, aren't you," laughed JJ, and Otabek bit his lip as irritation sparked. "You can join us for dinner if you want."

Even if JJ was able to be sociable, Otabek decided that he wasn't. His mood had darkened as the days grew shorter and the competition drew closer – he was more likely to burn bridges than build them.

"Thanks, I'll pass."

He turned to the door and glanced at Yuri, suppressing a smile as the memory of boiled eggs rose in his mind, and sobered. Even though they had never met, not properly, Yuri had been ever-present at the edges of Otabek's life – both an inspiration, a faceless idol, and a wish. Something in Otabek demanded that he acknowledge their shared, if distant, history.

"Hey, why are you staring at me, asshole?" Yuri snarled at him, puffing up like a startled cat.

Otabek smiled to himself as he left. They were, perhaps, more similar than he'd believed.


	9. Nine For A Kiss

Otabek wondered privately whether official practice hours took jetlag into account, or if whoever finalized the schedule took sadistic pleasure in maximizing pain. Though his sleep schedule had largely fallen into step, the other finalists staggered into the rink yawning – though in Christophe Giacometti's case, Otabek wasn't sure if his eyes should be categorized as 'bleary' or 'bedroom.' Yuuri Katsuki whimpered slightly as Viktor Nikiforov pried a steaming paper cup from the hotel buffet from his hands.

As Otabek finished stretching, he found himself watching Viktor, whose eyes sparkled as he pulled Katsuki's jacket from his shoulders. The rumors had flown when Viktor announced his indefinite change of career - a hidden injury, an ISU ban, a covered-up death and a clone replacement – but none of them had mentioned that he seemed _happy._ He wondered whether the same evidence could be found on his expressionless face, and if Viktor's apparent joy had sated the hunger that drove them all to compete. If he'd had to choose.

He almost didn't notice as the last skater stormed in. Otabek had assumed that Yuri would have somehow scheduled a later practice, since his Instagram noted that he'd flown straight to Barcelona from the Golden Spin in Croatia – even if Yuri hadn't already been famously short-tempered, Otabek was moderately impressed that he'd refrained from tearing JJ's throat out with his teeth in the lobby last night.

When Yuri took the ice, it was the first time Otabek had ever seen him skate in person. He let himself drift to the edge of the rink, wordlessly accepting the water bottle Ali offered as he watched Yuri from the corner of his eye.

"You've studied Plisetsky's routines, yes?" Ali murmured, following Yuri's path across the ice. When Otabek tipped his head in a silent question, he continued, "It was harder to see in the videos, but- there, look at his hand coming out of that toe loop, how he stepped into the spin. You copied him while learning those?"

"Yes."

Everything Otabek was, down to his skating, was a borrowed part of someone else's soul. His father's eyes, his mother's laugh, Leo's music – even JJ's quadruple Salchow and the twist of Yuri's fingers as he finished the jump. How many reflections of himself lived on in others?

Otabek let the thought carry him back into his practice, and he remembered the other Kazakhstani junior thanking him at Junior Worlds two years before.

 **:: :: ::**

Lunch was pushed back in favor of a long bus trip across the city. Otabek smiled to himself as he officially parted with the remainder of his prize money from Worlds.

"You may have the helmets, too. If they fit," the woman told him, pushing a strand of greying hair from her face. "You _can_ drive?"

"Yes, ma'am," replied Otabek, declining to mention that it was only legal as of five weeks before.

Ali wiped a palm across his right eye and sighed.

"Beka. You're not old enough to rent anything. Why – _how_ \- do you have a motorcycle?"

"It's mine," Otabek watched his coach's face with amusement.

"Is that why you bought a biker jacket yesterday?"

"Yes."

"You know, most people buy postcards," Ali mumbled. " _Postcards,_ Otabek."

 **:: :: ::**

Otabek meant to spend the afternoon touring the city, enjoying his newfound freedom from the strict, rote paths of the city buses and metro.

What Otabek did instead was idly check his phone as he slowly picked at a thimble-sized cup of thick, bittersweet hot chocolate and a gently steaming churro. His eyes flicked between Instagram and the black motorcycle visible through the café window.

Yuuri Katsuki and Viktor seemed to be shopping, while Christophe and Phichit were engaged in a heated selfie battle. He quickly skipped past a photo of Isabella captioned " _She came to watch me win! #allhailtheking"_ and hesitated.

Yuri Plisetsky's latest post featured himself in front one of Barcelona's countless boutiques. There was a lot of black leather and animal print. Though it had only been uploaded two minutes ago, there were already a handful of comments trickling in.

It was geotagged.

"ahhh! 5 mins from hotel wish me luck"

Otabek thought about the giggling teenagers in his hotel lobby the night before, Yuri's aura of annoyed discomfort, and the jump in popularity that would have inevitably followed Yuri and his already significant social media following after his advancement to seniors.

Otabek did not mention the egg incident.

He watched as the bright colors of Park Güell grew muted beside the setting sun, thinking about luck and the people who asked for it, and about being lonely.

"Are you going to be my friend or not?"

Several hours later, Otabek stared at the white plaster ceiling of his hotel room and exhaled slowly. The previous days had felt like a prologue, and suddenly he'd been launched into the thick of it.

It was the first time he'd had fun at a competition in years.

Otabek smiled at the empty room.

 **:: :: ::**

"Davai!" Otabek shouted, and he stood frozen as the world record fell, shattered, at Yuri's feet.

A few minutes later, his heart bounded into a new rhythm as his words came back to him from Yuri's lips, and he flew.

He thought about calling out to JJ, but the words turned hard and bitter on his tongue. It wasn't until that evening, while perusing a street of shops with Yuri, that he wondered whether JJ remembered their argument so many months before – if JJ saw his exchange with Yuri, decided that Otabek had turned his back and chosen to bestow fortune upon another.

Otabek wanted to tell him that his luck, as always, chose its own path.

 **:: :: ::**

 _Fourth._ It whirled through his mind as he jabbed the elevator button with more force than was strictly necessary, wincing at the protest from his fingertip. _Fourth._

It was respectable. It was the Grand Prix Final, against five of the best skaters in the men's senior division. It was just shy of the podium. It was good enough, all things but one considered.

The scales were balanced, and order had been restored.

JJ had clapped him on the shoulder as the medal ceremony finished. "Beks! How's that for a week, eh? Out for dinner with my parents tonight, you in?"

"No thanks," replied Otabek, unclenching his jaw. "I have plans already, sorry. Congratulations."

The hotel bar was packed with skaters and their coaches. He spotted Ali in the far corner and ducked his head, pulling the hood of his jacket around his ears. Later, they would pick the day to pieces and whittle the future's arches into something smoother, but tonight was his. Otabek sighed as he walked toward the lobby doors, wishing that the drive to the club would take longer than ten minutes, that he could spend the whole night skimming across the pavement until the dark cloud sinking into his mind was left behind for good.

Six months ago, he would have curled up in the empty hole in his chest and slept. Now, he reached for something to fill it, thanking the foresight of his two-weeks-younger self.

"Oi! Otabek!" Yuri darted towards him, scowling, and Otabek wilted. Their friendship was too new to be a balm, and Yuri's medal burned red-hot in his mind. Tonight, gold weighed less than nothing. "You going out somewhere?"

"Yeah," he said neutrally. "A friend of mine is DJing at a club near here, so I thought I'd stop in."

It wasn't quite a lie, as he had technically spoken to one of the Poblenau DJs several times before, but it wasn't even midway to the truth. Otabek couldn't quite explain his prevarication, except to shield himself from the stabbing suspicion that the world was ready to tear down any part of him that he dared to show off.

Instead, he met Yuri's determination head-on, and decided that if there was both soldiers, there was at least one major difference between them: Otabek knew that discretion could be the better part of valor. His bike carried him faster than Yuri's legs could manage.

Otabek told himself that he misheard the shout that followed him down the narrow street.

If, even now, he couldn't be enough, he wouldn't fight it. He ignored the persistent buzz of his phone as he pulled up to the club.

 **:: :: ::**

Then, there was music.

Otabek hid a laugh in the collar of his jacket as he worked, giddy with the waves of sound rolling around him and off the dancers crowding the floor. He'd lost before, he'd lose again, he'd _win_ again, and the void under his feet had been revealed as nothing deeper than a shadow.

Yuri was definitely pissed, and Otabek couldn't guess whether his anger had been a knife or a shield. If the fragile new friendship could, and should, be fixed, he would try – but if not, Otabek knew how to lose. Yuri wasn't the first idol he'd sacrificed to reality.

Pale hair glinted in the roving lights, and Otabek's fingers almost slipped from their pattern as Yuri Plisetsky adjusted his sunglasses. His broad grin issued a challenge without a trace of the earlier rage.

This time, Otabek didn't run.

 **:: :: ::**

Entirely new choreography, in one night, and a sliver of Otabek's reflection had been given a place in Yuri's life.

"I'm not who they try to make me into," Yuri said quietly, huddling deeper into the borrowed jacket. "I thought… you wouldn't think I should keep pretending I am."

Otabek nodded, and Yuri didn't ask for more. Otabek did.

"You were really angry earlier," he stated, watching Yuri's face from the corner of his gaze. "Because I didn't listen to you?"

Yuri stiffened beside him. The soft _shush shush_ of the ocean and distant rush of cars were the only sounds on the beach for several long moments.

"You didn't say anything was wrong," Yuri said at last. He glared out across the water. "You just left."

"Nothing was wrong," replied Otabek, surprised. "I was disappointed. I needed some space. It wasn't your problem."

Yuri jumped to his feet and kicked at the sand. "I didn't _know_ that, if it was my fault. You didn't want me around, I thought- when people won't say what's wrong it means you can't fix it," he spat, and ran his fingers through his hair. "I didn't realize that you… Mila told me to leave you alone. That I was being stupid."

There was blood threaded through his words, and they weren't close enough for Otabek to examine the wound, not without etching scars into both of them.

"It would help if I was blunt next time," he said. There would be a next time, many next times, when his mood blackened once more and the world started yanking him into the depths. Yuri's stiff shrug was an uncertain agreement. "You tracked me down at Poblenau when I didn't answer my phone."

Yuri's fans cornering him in the alley, Otabek's phone ringing, Timur's name flashing across the screen over and over and the glimpses that defied chance and circumstance –

Otabek stood up too and brushed sand from his jeans. He matched his breath to the sea's pulse until the shaking of his hands calmed.

"I don't want you to do that again," he stated. "Ask me what I mean if you aren't sure. I'll tell you when I need space, and unless it's an emergency, I… I'm not angry. I understand why you followed me, and I'm glad you did, but I can't be-"

"Deal," Yuri said, when Otabek's voice trailed off. "We're… still friends?"

"Definitely," Otabek agreed. "Let's get back and make you an awesome exhibition, Yuri."

"Yura," mumbled Yuri. The beach was dark, but Otabek could make out the flush on his pale face. "Call me Yura."


	10. Ten For A Chance You Must Not Miss

There were many ways to get someone's attention, even if that someone was listening to music in bed with his eyes closed, and only one of them involved Gulshat dropping her full weight onto Otabek's stomach.

"Eugh," he gasped, glaring up at her reproachfully as he removed his headphones. "Gulshat, _why._ "

"Are you coming to Makpal's place or not?" Gulshat asked cheerfully. She readjusted her seat as Otabek tried to push her off. "It's bad movie night, we- _ah!_ " She shrieked and tumbled to the floor, where she lay giggling as Otabek scrambled to sit up. "Shit, that worked better when you were smaller than me, you just sorta dragged yourself around like a turtle until Dad rescued you, remember? Anyway, movie night. You in?"

"A nicer sister wouldn't use her butt as a weapon," Otabek grumbled. "It's at Makpal's apartment? I thought…"

"Asha canceled, she had to take an extra shift at the restaurant." Gulshat gave him a probing look as she climbed to her feet. "And no, her brother is back in Astana now, so you won't have to avoid him."

"I'm not avoiding anyone," Otabek said, laughing quietly and lifting an eyebrow. "I haven't been home."

In fact, his flight had landed in Almaty mere hours before he was due at the Kazakhstani Nationals, an arrangement that had him clutching the armrests with white knuckles while Ali sent a stream of emails to the organizers, assuring them that everything was on schedule. At least Otabek had reached a brief lull in the constant activity, while Yuri's texts grew less coherent and more vulgar as Russian Nationals approached.

"I don't care if you are, I'm just curious." Gulshat shrugged, but her tone belied her nonchalance. "You and Akan had your thing this summer, then you started ghosting whenever he was around, so I wanted to make sure… he didn't fuck up, or whatever."

"No, we weren't even dating, neither of us wanted that." Or at least _he_ hadn't wanted it, and had slowly drawn back when his armor began to crack – when a flicker of warmth bloomed in his chest at a glance, or a touch, or a text, painting his weaknesses with the bright red dot that heralded the _crack_ of a sniper rifle. "He's fine. Anyway, I think I'll pass tonight, I'm skyping Yuri later."

"Cool." She reached for the door and sighed. "Akan asked me if you were doing okay. If he hasn't screwed up- look, I know you're not… looking for anything right now, but don't be a dick about it."

Otabek's nerves were raw, exposed; he flinched away but didn't raise his guard.

"I'll talk to him," he said softly. "Thanks."

"When you want to," Gulshat replied, with no pressure behind her words. "Beka, it's not your- never mind. If you decide to come over, text one of us, her doorbell's broken."

She left. Otabek thought about fresh starts and old scars.

 **:: :: ::**

In January, Otabek found himself back in St. Petersburg watching Yuri Plisetsky dance.

"Something like that, anyway," Yuri said with a shrug, dropping his leg to the floor from a standing split. "What do you think?"

Otabek paused for a moment, mentally translating the movements to the ice and the shriek of guitars. Yuri scuffed one foot against the wooden floor and stretched his arms overhead. "It's smoother technically, but you look bored."

For an instant, Otabek thought that Yuri would spit his words back at him – who was _he_ to question Yuri's choreography, after all – but the pale eyebrows were furrowed into a frown instead of a glare.

"Yeah," Yuri grumbled. He dropped to the floor, legs splayed, and twisted his fingers together. "It fucking sucks. It's even worse than Angel of the Fire Festival. I don't want to skate this shit."

"Are you sure they won't let you keep Welcome to the Madness the way it was?"

" _Hah,_ no," he growled. "Lilia wouldn't even… I thought I'd try and tone it down, then at least it would be my- our choreo, but she'd have me skating _en pointe_ if she could. Guess I'll have to smuggle the costume in and do it anyway."

Yuri's gaze shifted out of focus as he scratched the floorboards with a fingernail, and Otabek pushed himself to his feet.

"Let's stop by the National Library before it closes," Otabek said, reaching out and pulling Yuri up. "I was too much of a little punk to appreciate it last time."

Something in Yuri's face snapped shut, and his expression cleared. "What, and that's changed?" He grinned. "Still little, still a punk, Beka."

"Hey, watch who you're calling a punk, punk."

An hour later, Yuri whispered to the library steps like he was sharing a secret, but the winter breeze whisked his words away from Otabek's ears.

"I said, I'm not going to skate Welcome to the Madness again," he repeated at Otabek's silent question, shoving his hands into his coat pockets as he kicked the stone stairs. "I got away with it then because- yeah. Next time, if I don't do Lilia's program, she might decide it's not worth choreographing for me because I won't use it anyway. Then I'm fucked for next season."

"Oh," Otabek said softly, feeling as though the confession might shatter if it wasn't handled gently. The specter of Viktor Nikiforov's return hung heavily over all of them, laced with adrenaline and hot lead, but for Yuri, it wasn't a ghost of the future. Viktor, with mere weeks of preparation and nearly a year without serious training, had gracefully accepted silver – but it had still taken everything Yuri had to claw his way to gold. "Ms. Baranovskaya… she doesn't seem like the type to compromise."

Yuri snorted and fell silent.

Something important, something invisible, rested in the space between them: ripe fruit, ready to pluck, but Otabek couldn't tell if it would taste of sugar or bitter poison. He watched the dark subway tunnels flicker past while Yuri shifted beside him, an ever-moving tangle of elbows and knees.

Yuri would be performing his exhibition routine again before the end of the season. For him, it wasn't a question. For Otabek, he might as well have expected to step onto thin air and have it hold beneath his feet.

Or perhaps, Yuri didn't have a choice but to close his eyes and walk into the breach with no safety net except for his cold certainty. He may have been a soldier, but for the first time, it occurred to Otabek that he might be marching under someone else's orders.

When they arrived back at Lilia's house, Otabek looked down at the ice-studded boots already beginning to drip onto the polished floor and wondered where Yuri lived before. He wouldn't just lose Lilia's choreography – he'd lose a home.

Yuri clicked his tongue and crouched. A cat treat had appeared in his hand, and he smiled as the soft _pap pap pap_ of padded feet was followed by blue eyes and a plumed tail. When Yuri picked up Potya, the cat hung limply over his arm, staring balefully at Otabek.

"Brat," Yuri murmured into the fluffy white fur. "He'll get used to you soon, he's just a jerk. So, food?"

"Sure," he agreed, but Yuri didn't move except to stroke Potya's ears. "Yura?"

"If you're mad at me you can just say so," Yuri said after a moment's pause.

Otabek froze. _You don't look like you're enjoying yourself much. Why did you even bother to come?_

"I'm not angry," he replied carefully. "I'm sorry if I seemed to be."

Yuri's eyes widened, then creased into a scowl. "No, it's- never mind, it's dumb."

"I'd like to know, if you'll tell me." Otabek's heart had leapt into his throat, and he swallowed, trying to force it back down. "I don't care if it's dumb."

"People are mad at me a lot." He gave a stiff shrug. "I don't give a fuck."

 _Let it drop,_ Otabek told himself. _Don't push and piss him off._

He put a hand on Yuri's shoulder, overly aware of the pressure and heat of his skin. Casual touches were a language Otabek used to know, but now it was rough and accented. Potya squirmed away from his fingers, but Yuri's fidgeting stilled.

"Yura, I-"

Yuri cut him off. "Welcome to the Madness. I'm not skating it."

"Yes?"

"You gave me the song," Yuri told him. "Then stayed up all night helping with the choreography. And now I'm ditching it."

"That's not-" _fair,_ he almost said, but when had emotions ever been fair? Otabek closed his eyes briefly, and in the darkness he saw a vase of wilted flowers, the moments ticking by as he tried to feel for the invisible point at which he could throw them out without being deemed ungrateful. A museum, with every token of affection pinned behind glass like butterflies. "You don't… owe me, Yura. I was glad you asked me to help. I wish you could skate what you wanted to. You don't have to prove anything to me."

"Right." Yuri bent down and let Potya hop to the floor. "Yeah. I told you it was stupid. What are you making that face about?"

"I just realized that your cat has worn international gold more often than I have," remembering the Instagram photos that followed nearly every competition. He looked at Yuri, who had become as much of a teenage boy as a record breaking prodigy – maybe he'd fallen from that pedestal, but a perfect idol could never be human, never be _alive._ Otabek smiled. "Maybe that's why he's being snotty, he knows it."

 **:: :: ::**

The Skype window was dark. Otabek closed the tab displaying a timed-out stream of the European Championships. He could barely make out the lines of Yuri's face peeking out from behind layers of blankets, illuminated by what must have been the bedside lamp in his hotel room.

"Hey," Otabek said, keeping his voice low. His clothing still smelled of cigarette smoke and stale alcohol. "Sorry I couldn't talk earlier."

"S'okay," mumbled Yuri. "I fell asleep anyway. You said it was a club?"

"More of a bar that's pretending to be a club."

Yuri leaned forward into the light, and Otabek didn't comment on the pink tinge of his eyes. "Do you get free drinks when you DJ?"

"As much milk as I want." Otabek grinned as Yuri snorted. "Drinking age is twenty-one here. They introduce me to the bartenders beforehand, tell them not to give me any alcohol."

The corner of Yuri's mouth twitched, but the nascent smile withered and died on his lips.

"Yura, are you-"

"You don't have to try to make me feel better, alright?" Yuri cut him off, the words snapping like a whip. "I got fifth because I fucked up. I wouldn't have deserved gold if I was the only one skating. I'll deal with it, I don't need you to feel sorry for me."

"I don't," Otabek retorted, and tried to sand the edges off of his tone. For most of his life, he would have given anything for an international fifth. "I don't feel sorry for you, I just… I know how you feel, and it sucks."

The confession was a gap in his armor. Otabek waited for a dagger, aimed by intent or accident, to slip through. After all, his scores were rarely a result of accident or missed potential – he simply wasn't good enough.

Yuri jerked his head back like Otabek had slapped him. "One of the reporters asked if I thought the Grand Prix was a fluke," he admitted. "They all wanted to talk about Viktor. I got- Yakov told me to leave until I could 'behave like an adult.'"

"At Worlds last year, they kept forgetting what country I was from." Otabek rubbed his temples as the memory resurfaced. "One journalist asked how it felt to represent the Middle East."

"Holy shit. Please tell me you kicked them with your skates on."

"I was really… out of it," explained Otabek. "I couldn't figure out what he was saying, so I just stared at him until he left."

Yuri snorted. "Reporters are fucking morons." He frowned. "If any of them do that again, tell me who it is. I might- I've got a damn army of preteens, I can blackmail Viktor, it won't do much but at least we can embarrass them."

"I- thanks," Otabek said. His thoughts flinched away from the possibility, though Yuri's offer made him smile despite himself.

Yuri's scowl deepened.

"Yura?"

"I don't fucking get it, Beka," Yuri growled. "I mean, we all get shit from journalists and whoever, the ISU fucking _hates_ Viktor, but none of this happens to him. What the hell do they have against you?"

"What do you mean?" Otabek asked carefully, hoping Yuri hadn't noticed his luck, hadn't found a pattern that couldn't be corrected. That he wouldn't believe in it. "Kazakhstan isn't as well-known as Russia or Japan, we have to expect that."

"No, I mean… fuck," Yuri snarled, running his hands through his hair. "Barcelona. Jerkass Leroy. I was too- too distracted then to notice. But it didn't make _sense._ I watched the programs again and there's no way he deserved bronze, I scored it three times and I never want to see his disgusting grin ever again. It's fucking impossible. That was _your_ medal _._ "

"It- the judges know what they're doing," Otabek said. He picked at a tiny scrape on his thumb and winced as the skin gave way.

"Not this time they didn't," insisted Yuri. "Beka, you should challenge the scoring, it's _wrong,_ I can prove it."

"No."

"But-"

Otabek sighed. "We already did, Yura. They rejected it."

"So do it again!"

Yuri, the soldier who would fight the battle long after it was lost. The difference was that Yuri might win anyway, but Otabek would fall long before that point.

"Then I get branded as the skater who throws a tantrum whenever I lose," Otabek said bitterly. "It was one competition. It's not worth it."

"What the _fuck,_ Otabek? They're just going to-"

"I'm done talking about this," Otabek snapped, the sharp syllables of his name echoing in his mind. A tiny question bloomed, and he struggled to quash it: who would complain about fairness when it was their victory on the line? "Worry about your own career, and I'll deal with mine."

Yuri's mouth hung open for a moment, and Otabek forced himself to relax as the rush of tension left him flushed and shaking.

"I'm sorry," Otabek murmured. "I shouldn't have lost my temper, it was- I'm frustrated at other things, not with you. I'm sorry."

A broad grin broke out across Yuri's face.

"Beka, that was _awesome._ Like you were in a movie." His smile softened like he was sharing a secret. "And- you said what you meant. It's easier when people are blunt, it's not… I know what you want."

"I'm working on it." Otabek forced himself to look away from the drop of blood beading on his thumb. "I know I'm quiet a lot. It's hard to tell what I'm thinking."

Yuri lifted an eyebrow. "Beka, you're not quiet."

"The rest of the world would disagree, Yura."

"You talk plenty when people are listening to you," Yuri said. "And you say stuff that means shit, you don't make noise to listen to yourself."

Something lurched in Otabek's chest. "I… thanks."

"I just yell all the time," Yuri said with a short laugh. "Thanks for putting up with that, I guess."

"You don't," Otabek replied, letting a realization blossom. "You yell when people don't listen to you. Not all the time."

Yuri's lips formed a soft _o_ of surprise, and Otabek smiled back.

They weren't the same, not exactly, but inversions: white to black, noise to silence.


	11. Eleven For Health

The season wore on, and it wore Otabek down.

The cloak of his mood didn't weigh as heavily on his shoulders as it had before – if Otabek had been underwater since the end of January, then last year he was six feet under the earth and digging himself deeper.

Otabek held that thought close to himself as he swam.

Another difference: sometimes, he could keep his head above the water.

"Beka, you look like you got hit by a truck," Yuri commented when the Skype call connected.

"Hello to you too, Yura." Otabek tugged his fingers through his hair and didn't bother to force a smile, but this time it was because he knew Yuri would understand without an exaggerated pantomime of emotion. "I'm trying a new look," he continued with a yawn.

"I think we should all hibernate through winter," grumbled Yuri. "My hair freezes. My sweaty hair. Through my hat. Oh, you have a March birthday, people say. A spring birthday. Must be nice and warm, they say. Fuck you, I'm Russian. We don't have spring, we have second winter and it's not even spring yet, so go stick a cactus up your ass."

Otabek smirked. "Is that your way of asking about your birthday present? Told you, I'll give it to you at Worlds."

"No, it was me being mad about sweat icicles."

"Okay."

Yuri began to fidget, and Otabek waited.

"Just a _hint,_ " he whined. "My birthday was last week!"

"Hmm, I guess that's fair," Otabek acquiesced. The retro-style polaroid camera was safely hidden in his locker at the rink – he didn't trust Yuri not to call Gulshat and bribe her into searching for it. "It's kinda small."

"Beka, I fucking swear-"

"It's green."

Yuri growled.

"It's prickly."

"Are you…" Yuri blinked. "A cactus?"

"You got me," Otabek said, and silently begged his eyebrows not to do whatever it was that gave him away. "I thought you might like to have one, since you seem to have a thing about cacti. And, you know, orifices. But your present, your business, whatever."

"Oh my god, Beka, you can shove-"

"Yura, I wouldn't do that with your birthday present. Who do you think I am?" He sighed. "Besides, that's _your_ fetish."

Yuri buried his face in his hands and screamed.

 **:: :: ::**

Though Otabek is left to stare up at the podium when the World Championships conclude, he doesn't look down on himself. He'd skated well enough to ignite a candlewick of pride, and the taste of near-victory was gasoline splashed onto the flame.

For a brief moment, Otabek met Yuri's gaze through the crush of cameras, bodies, and emotion that filled the lobby they'd been ushered into. He tapped his chest, a mirror of the point at which Yuri's silver medal rested as it hung from his neck, and smirked.

 _Next time, Yura._

Yuri grinned back at him, all flashing eyes and bared ambition, and mouthed _come and get it_ before he was whisked away by his coach.

JJ offered a stiff handshake by way of congratulations, and Otabek wondered what the price of their friendship had been, what had finally toppled its wobbling orbit. Maybe it was the tiny but vital gap between their results, or the pressure of Otabek's teeth sinking into his lip and choking his shout of _bonne chance_ into a strangled whisper. It would have been an empty wish. Otabek was no longer his lucky charm.

Chickens and eggs, loss and chance – he wondered if his luck deserted JJ when their friendship fell apart, or if it might not have been the other way around.

Instead of answering himself, Otabek replied to a hovering reporter who spoke to him in the language of home.

"It's an honor to represent Kazakhstan," he told her, and she beamed.

 **:: :: ::**

The end of an Almaty summer sparkled around them, warm and dry.

"We're going to fall down the steps moving your stupid furniture and break every bone in our bodies," Yuri grumbled, tossing his head to move a lock of hair away from his eye. It fell back into place immediately. "We'll be watching the Olympics from our hospital beds. Why isn't your sister helping? It's her apartment too, for fuck's sake."

Otabek smiled over Yuri's shoulder.

"I _am_ helping, my sweet little fuckwad," Gulshat purred from behind him. To his credit, Yuri jumped but didn't shriek. "If you fall, try to land on top of Beka. He's durable."

"Your concern for my wellbeing is touching," Otabek said, rolling his eyes as Yuri snickered. "The building has a lift, Yura. We're not carrying anything up ten flights of stairs."

When they reached the flat, Yuri dropped his end of the desk and began to inspect the empty cabinets and drawers. Gulshat tipped her head and shrugged at Otabek before opening the windows to air out the acrid odor of fresh paint.

"What are you doing?"

"What do you mean?" Yuri clambered onto the counter, peering at the top shelf, then glanced back at Otabek, whose confusion must have been written across his face. He laughed. "I'm making sure you don't have bugs or mice before you move all your shit in. Or mold," he added, jumping down. "Couldn't smell it with the paint."

"Ah." Otabek helped Yuri to his feet. "Thank you. I didn't know to look."

Yuri wiped imaginary dust from his jeans. "Yeah. Uh, I think you're good."

"I'm sorry, I didn't plan to make you help us move," Otabek said ruefully. "Housing here is tight, and we weren't expecting this to be available now."

"Oh, you didn't think about my bulging biceps and invite me over as unpaid labor?" Yuri snorted. Otabek elbowed him. "Damn, Altin, I'm disappointed in you."

"Yeah, drag him," Gulshat shouted from a bedroom.

"That's not how you use that," Yuri yelled back, and Gulshat cackled. "Beka, back me up."

Otabek raised his hands in mock surrender. "Neutral territory, I've never heard that before in my life. This is between you two."

The rest of the afternoon was spent shuttling items – mostly clothing and kitchen supplies, as they hadn't had time to buy new furniture – and mediating Yuri and Gulshat's good-natured bickering, until they established a truce and formed a united front to tease Otabek. He hid his smile under a put-upon sigh.

As evening drew in around them, Gulshat dropped the last of her boxes. "My arms are going to fall off, I'm done for the day," she said. Otabek nodded and stretched out his shoulders. Yuri, who was sprawled across the bare floor, groaned softly. "You two coming?"

"If anyone makes me move, I will use the last of my strength to murder them," Yuri growled. "Then I'll die and it'll be your fault."

"I'd like to unpack what I can," Otabek said. He nudged Yuri with his foot, prompting another mumbled curse. "Want to order dinner?"

"See you later, nerds," Gulshat laughed as Yuri shot up.

They sat on the floor to eat, balancing paper plates on their knees between stacks of boxes.

"I thought this would be easier than moving between countries," Otabek admitted. "But it's… different."

"It isn't?" Yuri asked through a mouthful of noodles. "How many times have you moved?"

"Russia, Colorado, Montreal, home," said Otabek, counting each on his fingers. "So this is the fifth time, except Russia technically counts twice. But I never really – my parents' place was always home, even if I wasn't there. I was only carrying some things around with me."

"Yeah." Yuri chewed on the edge of his Styrofoam cup, leaving a ring of tooth marks around the rim. "Twice for me. Or three times, when I went to my grandparents, but I don't remember that. Moving out of the dorms was kind of like this."

"You lived in the dorms? When?"

"From when I came to Moscow until last summer. So, four years."

"I assumed you were staying with a host family or something, because you have a cat," Otabek said, reaching for a napkin. "I didn't think any dorms would let you keep pets."

For a moment, Yuri went completely still – Otabek hadn't realized how much Yuri was synonymous with motion until his fidgeting stuttered and ceased for a split second.

"Guess you've been in shitty dorms, then." Yuri's knee started to bounce once more.

"Or you had a secret cat," Otabek teased. A pang shot through him; that was JJ's joke. "Not that I can ever imagine _you_ breaking any rules."

Yuri shoved his plate onto the floor and stood up. "Or maybe I just had a damn cat," he snapped. "I'm going outside, this place reeks."

The door slammed behind Yuri, and Otabek sat still, staring at nothing and everything. A wave of nausea hit him, and he dropped his remaining food into the plastic takeaway bag. The leftovers were wrapped up as best he could and placed in the empty fridge, where they looked oddly lonely against the bare shelves.

 _I didn't do anything wrong,_ a small, scared part of Otabek's mind whispered. _It wasn't my fault._

He closed the apartment's windows.

Yuri's discomfort would have been obvious, if he'd looked for it.

When he stepped out into the hallway, Yuri was hovering nearby with a pinched, tight frown. He glared at Otabek with the air of a cornered cat, hissing and spitting.

"I'm sorry," Yuri mumbled, the soft words belying his expression, though they were edged with tension. "For yelling. Fucking- I don't know."

"I wasn't listening to you before," said Otabek, letting the statement settle between them. "Thank you for apologizing. It's… okay." It was. The sting of disapproval, the pounding guilt of his heart, had faded.

"Okay." Yuri stared down at his hands, picking at the cuticles around nails that were perpetually bitten short. "Let's go for a walk. I don't want to go back in, the paint- it really does smell."

"It does," Otabek agreed. He followed Yuri, who was already making his way to the stairs. Not the lift, but the stairs. Ten flights. "Yura-"

"Whatever, I'll meet you in the lobby."

Otabek shrugged and followed him. He, too, would be better off if he burned away some of the nervous energy twitching under his skin.

Almaty was beautiful at night. Not for the first time, Otabek wished that words came easily to him, so he could tell Yuri what it felt like – that every wall of glimmering lights set on the backdrop of a darkened sky took his breath away, that the city wrapped itself around him until Otabek couldn't tell where he ended and Almaty began.

"Being here feels like skating," Otabek said instead.

Yuri nodded. "It's your home," he replied quietly.

"I didn't know how much I missed it until I came back." The admission was bittersweet: he might never have known Almaty, known himself, had he not left them behind.

"I wasn't dissing your apartment earlier," Yuri announced, and Otabek blinked. Yuri's mind skipped between subjects like hopscotch squares, and it often took him a while to trace the path. "I didn't mean it was a shitty flat and was going to be moldy and gross. I just- it was habit."

"I thought it was a smart thing to check," Otabek interjected, but Yuri didn't appear to hear him – he twisted a strand of blond hair between his fingers and chewed on his lip, seemingly caught in an internal debate.

"It was my job to check the cabinets and the pipes when I was a kid," Yuri continued, still picking at the scarred skin around his fingernails. "Dedushka was always taking care of my grandma, and his back isn't good. Stuff broke a lot. We had to make sure there wasn't a water leak rotting the walls away, though I guess there's fuck all we could have done if there was."

Otabek didn't say anything as he let the new information trickle in, shifting and reshaping, bringing Yuri into a sharper focus in his mind. He guessed that this story wouldn't involve a cat, either.

"I wanted you to come meet Dedushka, but he doesn't travel much, and I didn't- the house is better now but it's not great. It's still kinda shit." Yuri kicked an empty bottle left on the pavement. "But that's… that's home for me, I guess. I knew it wouldn't be what you were expecting."

"No," Otabek admitted. "I forget that I'm… lucky."

That his own luck wasn't limited to trailing behind.

"You thought I just _had_ an entire army of obsessed fans too, didn't you?"

"Don't you?" Otabek glanced over at Yuri, who wore a dry grin. "I definitely rescued you from them at some point."

"Oh, I have them. Social media, lots of interviews, let them call me a fairy, respond to letters." Yuri rolled his eyes. "Have an official fanclub with merchandise."

Otabek narrowed his eyes as he pieced the words together. "You planned it. You created them?"

"Mhmm," confirmed Yuri.

"Why?"

"Of course you'd ask that, Beka," grumbled Yuri, and he poked Otabek in the ribs with fond exasperation. "Money. Sponsors. When I got to the senior division, I knew I'd be competing with everyone else. With _Viktor._ Having thousands of people who'd buy anything with my name on it gives me an edge. Selling autographed posters in juniors let Dedushka fix his car."

He stopped talking and curled in around himself.

"Shit," breathed Otabek, and Yuri giggled at the curse. "I don't know whether to be impressed or terrified, because I think you could take over the world."

"Both, dumbass," Yuri told him. "And maybe when I retire."

 **:: :: ::**

Spending a week of early January in Russia with Yuri was on its way to becoming a tradition.

"We're not talking about it unless we're both drunk off our asses." That was the first thing Yuri said to Otabek when they met in the airport. Otabek agreed, and hissed in pain as his foot slipped on the icy pavement outside.

Viktor Nikiforov drove them to the Baranovskaya house, and a bit of Otabek's haggard mind clamored against his skull that he was being chauffeured by a living legend. Yuri propped his muddy shoes on the back of the seat.

The ghost of a smile whispered across Otabek's face when Yuri snatched his backpack from his hands and insisted on carrying it into the house. He suspected that Yuri would have tried to carry him, too, had they not silently agreed to let the remainders of their dignity die in peace instead of actively murdering it.

Yuri did, however, shove Otabek onto a kitchen chair as soon as they were inside.

"Ice it," he commanded, shoving a coldpack into Otabek's hands.

"In a minute." Otabek hated the touch of frost against his skin, letting it seep through his muscle and bone. Irony, he thought, had its own sense of humor. He busied himself coaxing off his sock and the heavy brace.

"If you don't, I'll tell Lilia," threatened Yuri.

"You will tell me what, Yura?"

Yuri squeaked. Otabek slammed his elbow into the corner of the kitchen table and moaned softly as Lilia strode into the room.

"Yura, put on the water, if you will." She sat down across from Otabek, and Yuri reached for the kettle without complaint. "Your flight was pleasant?"

"Delayed, but yes, thank you."

"Aeroflot?" He nodded, and she clicked her tongue in disapproval before glancing at the neglected coldpack. "Ice."

Otabek held the ice against his foot.

"You have a competent doctor, I trust?"

"Yes," confirmed Otabek, half certain that Lilia would drag him to the hospital herself if she wasn't convinced. "It's only a minor fracture. Hopefully, I'll be able to compete by Worlds."

Yuri slammed three mugs down by the stove with slightly more force than was necessary or advisable.

Later that evening, Yuri leaned into Otabek as he reached over to adjust the laptop screen. Their cocoon of blankets shifted, and Otabek grumbled as a draft of chilly air snuck in.

Yuri muted the video they'd been pretending to watch and stayed where he was, curled into Otabek's side.

"I know I said alcohol, but you look like you wouldn't share."

Otabek let out a huff of breath that wasn't exactly a disagreement.

"Fuck Russia," Yuri spat. "Fuck the Olympics, fuck growth spurts, fuck your foot, fuck this stupid fucking year." He paused. "Am I missing anything?"

After a moment's thought, Otabek added, "Winter."

" _Fuck_ winter," Yuri agreed vehemently. He pulled his phone from deep within the nest of blankets and turned it over in his hands, then dropped it onto the floor before clicking his tongue.

By this point, Otabek was no longer surprised to hear Potya's answering chirp and the approaching pad of his footsteps, nor that Yuri produced a cat treat from thin air.

"Do you just keep them in your pockets?" Otabek asked.

Yuri blinked as he lifted the cat onto his blanket-covered lap. "Yes."

As Otabek reached over to stroke Potya's silky fur, he wished the numbness that permeated his body and mind would retreat. The sharp ache of his heel was nothing in comparison to the dull throb of emptiness echoing in his heart. Yuri was warm next to him, but Otabek couldn't puncture the bubble that he was trapped within – the invisible film separated them, coating the world in a layer of fuzzy distance.

"This fucking sucks," Yuri repeated, his voice cracking. Otabek put his arm around Yuri's shoulders. "Everyone keeps saying it's not the end of the world but I can't do anything, I just- I'm- fuck." He hid his face in Potya's fur, and Otabek could barely make out what he said next. He wasn't sure he was supposed to hear. "They know they have the rest of the season, next year, the next Olympics if people don't screw it up."

He wasn't sure whether saying the wrong thing would be better or worse than saying nothing, but Yuri seemed to understand anyway.

"I thought I'd be able to act normal this week, but I'm- ugh," Yuri continued. "If you don't want to deal with me, whatever, go ahead."

"Yura, I'm not exactly at my best either."

Yuri twisted to look Otabek in the eye. "They let me keep a cat in my dorm room because it was better than having me melt down every other week," he said in a bitter monotone. "Keep the stupid kid stable enough to skate, problem solved. It mostly worked. Sure you wanna deal with that?"

A threatened cat would hiss and scratch, and Otabek wondered how much of his life Yuri had spent backed into a corner, lashing out at the relentless anxiety that penned him in.

All of it, he thought, thinking of the dark cloud of depression that trailed behind him like a devoted dog. All of it.

"Yura, can you hand me my bag?" He wanted to reach out and soothe the quick flash of fear behind Yuri's dismayed snarl. Otabek unzipped his backpack and dug through until he found the thin paper box, which he passed to Yuri. "You deal with me, too."

Otabek didn't watch as Yuri examined the label and the plastic-bubbled pills within, and for the first time, he thought it might be better if they weren't so alike.

 **:: :: ::**

The heat of summer couldn't erase the scars of winter's frost, but Otabek welcomed the sunlight nonetheless as he watched Yuri swoop across the rink before halting in a spray of glittering ice chips.

"You did that on purpose," grumbled Otabek.

Yuri grinned down at him. "You can't prove anything," he retorted, before spinning away. He glanced over his shoulder, calling, "What, you're just gonna let me get away it, Beka?"

His blond hair had begun to escape its braid, and frizzy tendrils tickled his cheekbones. Otabek started to skate after him, but then Yuri laughed and he stopped to let the world settle around him.

People called Yuri beautiful to make him into something they could understand, decided Otabek. The angles of his face were too sharp, so they sanded them off, the gleam in his eyes demanded more than they wanted to give; they called him pretty and pretended that was it.

Otabek didn't have the words to describe him. He didn't need them.


	12. Twelve For Wealth

It hit Otabek suddenly, the sensation as pressing as the splinters of agony that had driven through his foot when the bone cracked.

It hit him slowly, like the weeks spent ignoring the ache in his step – it was nothing, until it was everything.

However, big as it was, the realization didn't come in a moment hemmed by a bolt of lightning or swell of music. There was no shared sunset or jolt of eye contact to drive him to understanding. Instead, it was the unassuming buzz of his phone. It was the photo of Yuri, soaked in rain and malcontent. It was the quiet hum of joy in Otabek's chest that refused to fade as the image timed out, _five four three two one._

 _Oh,_ Otabek thought.

It was only then that he remembered the moments of lost breath – not stolen, but air his lungs had forgotten how to use – when Yuri turned towards him and the sunlight caught the angles of his fae-sharp face. It was then that he remembered how the sparkle of Yuri's laughter fizzed through his own bones.

 _I think I love him,_ Otabek thought, and he turned the knowledge over in his heart, in his hands, feeling its weight, inspecting the faceted gleam and glow. It had been so many months since he'd accepted a kiss without a gift receipt, and just as long since he'd offered one without carefully clipping all the strings.

Otabek set the love carefully aside, where it could grow without crushing the fragile leaves under his clumsy heels.

 **:: :: ::**

The old guard was gone: the skaters who had carved a younger Otabek's dreams into the ice with their skates stepped back, one by one, and relinquished the rink to the new blood's flashing ambition.

Christophe Giacometti had been the first to bow out, followed by Viktor Nikiforov, whom Yuri steadfastly insisted had been banned by the ISU for drooling on the rink whenever his fiancé appeared. Yuuri Katsuki was the final holdout, half in and half out until the ring of wedding bells had quieted – a significant betting pool was waiting to see whether his temporary leave of absence would end with children or another world record.

They weren't toppled idols or fallen warriors finally beaten back by time, though they all felt the sting as their dreams of besting Viktor were laid to rest with muted sighs, nor were they untouchable gods bequeathing the world to mortals. They were… friends, of a sort, a family not defined by blood or choice but there nevertheless.

But, as the Grand Prix dawned and drew near its close, they weren't.

"We were never that tiny and annoying," Yuri grumbled, flipping through the diner menu. "All the juniors are goblins from hell, I swear. What the fuck, why is this all breakfast food?"

"I think it's their thing," Otabek said, smiling to himself at the way Yuri's eyebrows arched across his face in exaggerated dismay. He pointed to the logo adorning their menus: _The Breakfast Club._ "You were definitely that tiny and annoying."

Yuri stuck his tongue out. "Well, you still are."

They ordered, and Otabek thought about letting Yuri see the feelings that had taken root in his bones – of capturing them in quick, neutral words, the same voice with which he'd asked the waitress for another cup of tea. It could be left on the table when they were finished and cleared away with the dishes. A rejection wouldn't break them apart, not if Otabek didn't force Yuri into a cage and bar the door.

Otabek passed his menu over and lifted his tea to his lips, letting the uncomfortable heat from the ceramic settle in his fingertips before he could open his mouth and burn them both with what he might say. It wasn't the closing of that door that he feared. It was what might lie behind it.

The string of friendships left to wither, to break, the empty kisses, the wilting flowers rotting in the trash: they all had one thing in common.

"I'm so fucking jetlagged this might as well be breakfast anyway," Yuri muttered, but Otabek's attention was glued to his plate.

"Yura," he said helplessly. Yuri looked down at the soft-boiled egg in its tiny cup, and then back to Otabek. "I thought you didn't like eggs," Otabek continued, remembering Viktor's placid, accepting disgust. _I'm too young for egghands._ "Why-"

Yuri paused, the spoon almost to his mouth. "What? No, eggs are okay."

With a sigh, Otabek kept his hands under the table and watched Yuri's expression cloud. He heard himself start to giggle, quiet and uncontained, as Yuri gagged and looked around with growing desperation, his eyes passing over his half-empty glass of water before he snatched a napkin.

"I fucking hate eggs," Yuri moaned. He hunched over, hiding the napkin and its contents as Otabek laughed. "They're- they taste fine and I want eggs and then they're slimy and rubbery and horrible."

"I saw you," wheezed Otabek. His eyes had begun to water, and a pair of elderly ladies at the next table cast scandalized glances their way. "A hotel lobby, years ago. You- Viktor's hand- you just-"

"Which time?"

"What?" Otabek forced in a breath before another wave of laughter rose. "Um, junior worlds. Your first year, I think."

"Yeah, that was on purpose." Yuri smirked. "Viktor would chaperone for junior competitions because he wanted to talk to people, but then he wouldn't go out anywhere and I'd get stuck in the hotel all week. So I made him buy me food at the airport, and then…"

 **:: :: ::**

As always, the competition itself passed in a haze of light and sweat and gasping breath. His time on the ice was a blur. Other moments stood out in his memory: the hard set of Yuri's jaw as he took his place under the lights, the crowd's heavy press of expectation. Yuri had never been just a human hurricane, but a boy who had turned himself into a storm.

Luck tugged at the edge of Otabek's vision when JJ's score touched Yuri's, eclipsed it, and the next _davai_ that fell from his lips cracked in the chilly air.

 _He doesn't need my luck,_ Otabek told himself, but the fleeting impulse to stay silent, to withhold it, flickered through his thoughts. _He wouldn't take it if he knew._

Yuri's shout of triumph after his free skate asked, _are you sure_? Otabek didn't answer it, because another stone had settled in the pit of his stomach as he allowed himself to read the final placements. It smothered the ember of pride that burned in his hard-won bronze.

Leo trailed after Otabek, no more than a stumble behind. Too close, _wrong,_ it was always Otabek on someone else's heels, always Otabek stretching and fighting and losing.

Leo had never lost to Otabek before, just like JJ had never lost to him before they fell apart, like his childhood friend had surpassed him before they changed and grew apart. Just like – Otabek's heart stammered and lurched in his chest – Yuri remained miles above him, untouchable as the noon sun.

But no. Leo smiled, and his grin hid neither his own disappointment nor his joy in Otabek's victory. They weren't as close as they had been, not with an ocean between them instead of a meter of ceramic tiles, but it wasn't over. Otabek breathed in his relief as he stood under the podium lights.

He looked up when Yuri draped his arm around Otabek's shoulders, pulling him off balance – and _oh,_ the last gasp of air would never be enough, because Yuri glowed beside him. His eyes sparked into golden fire that matched his medal, his hair, the warmth in Otabek's chest, and the soft words Yuri murmured into Otabek's ear were lost in the rush of his own blood.

This… _this_ could be enough.

The sensation followed him through the interviews and the exhibition. It was a fuzziness that wrapped around his head and softened his thoughts in an amber haze. _Enough,_ it whispered. _Good enough,_ but uncertainty wove intricate patterns through the words when Yuri took his elbow after the banquet and dragged him towards the music.

 _Enough,_ it sighed, as Otabek finally tumbled into bed and crawled under the hotel's scratchy duvet. _Enough, but-_

It was a relief when his phone rang. The sharp vibration cut through the fog of his drowsy thoughts, which had transformed from a comforting shroud to smothering bonds.

"Yeah?" Otabek mumbled. "What's-"

Yuri's voice flickered in the air. "Good, you're awake, I'm coming to your room."

"Okay," he replied, floundering. "Is there something wrong?"

But the line was already dead, the possibilities fluttering on butterfly wings, and Otabek shook his head. He didn't bother to change from the soft pyjama pants or attempt to tame the spikes of his hair, still damp from the shower.

Yuri let himself into the room, slipping Otabek's spare keycard into his pocket as he looked around with wide eyes.

"Do I need to help you hide a body?" Otabek asked, but Yuri's face didn't crinkle into soft lines of amusement. "Yura?"

Fingernails picked at the pocket of his torn black jeans, teeth sank into a thin lip. Then, he stilled.

"I love you," Yuri said to the room – no, to Otabek, who stood frozen, waiting for the qualifying _but._ "I, um. I wanted to tell you. Before I couldn't. Okay, anyway, I'm going the fuck to bed."

He turned away, and Otabek tried to reach for him, but his body was as heavy as marble. He felt for words instead, the slippery syllables that meant to much and too little and were never exactly what he wanted to say. _I'm-_

"Are you sure?"

Yuri stopped, twisted, snarled, and relaxed into a slump Otabek knew too well. "Yeah." He exhaled with a huff. "I just… I just figured it out. When I called you. But it's been- if I waited- I wouldn't have been able to."

 _Enough, good enough._ Otabek wondered if he'd feel the wax melting from his wings before it was too late.

"Yura," he said, too loudly, too quietly, too honestly. "I do too."

Yuri's mouth opened, shut, opened again as he gaped at Otabek. "You-"

"Yeah."

"Were you ever going to tell me?" Yuri asked, blinking.

Otabek shrugged, not to dismiss the question, but because he didn't want to hear his own voice whisper _I don't know._

At last, Yuri broke the silence. "So, are we going to… do something? With this?"

"Do you want to?" Otabek thought that Icarus must have counted the sun's warmth a blessing before it began to burn.

"Well, yeah," replied Yuri, a slow smirk blooming across his face. "Beka, you dumbass, of course I do. I didn't think it would go like this."

And at that, Otabek gave in - he would fall whether or not he tried to fly. He smiled back.

 **:: :: ::**

The next morning didn't bring doubt or uncertainty when Otabek awoke. Yuri never did, never had – he'd been a constant in Otabek's life since the dance class so many years ago, a source of certainty as they both grew and changed.

And now, they were changing again.

Otabek laughed to himself at the clarity of his thoughts, their twists and turns dragged into the sunlight and revealed to be mere shadows instead of gaping chasms. They'd meet for breakfast and talk, think, _be,_ before their respective flights returned them to their separate cities – and then, perhaps, Otabek would find himself in St. Petersburg once more, and it would be enough.

His phone interrupted his thoughts again.

"Hey, Leo, what's up?"

"Otabek, hi. Uh, this is a bit odd, I guess, but are you busy this morning?"

"For a while," Otabek told him. It was early, and the morning was long, and Yuri had never tried to pull him away from his friends. "I have time."

"Yeah, so," Leo chuckled nervously. "I've gotta give a big statement, and my coach is here, but… "

"Of course," agreed Otabek. Leo was a born performer, but that didn't make it comfortable under the spotlight. "What is it about?"

"I've been putting it off, I wasn't really-" Leo cleared his throat. "I'm retiring at the end of this season."

 **:: :: ::**

Otabek won and he lost. He won things, ideas, and people slipped away when he tried to be more than he'd always been.

He thought about JJ. Had their friendship failed before Otabek's luck deserted him?

He didn't know.

Timur, twisting further into bitterness and biting words as Otabek tried to be more, to be enough.

Victories. Balance.

Leo, leaving, his fingers brushing Otabek's bronze medal.

 _I'm not my luck,_ Otabek told himself. _It's not me._

And Yuri.

Yuri, the soldier Otabek thought would never need his luck – of course he had it anyway. And if he didn't, when he didn't, if Otabek listened to the song in his heart that drove him forward, that drove him to win…

Would he be gone, too?


	13. Thirteen, Beware, It's The Devil Himself

Otabek scrubbed at the soapy dishes without seeing them; instead, he picked at his own mind, trying in vain to wash the stains and wrinkles out of the messy tangle of his thoughts.

There were stacks of plates, bowls, and cups by the left by the kitchen sink. The ceramic tetris piles had been constructed by Gulshat, along with a promise that she would get to them later. Personally, Otabek thought that his sister had a unique understanding of the passage of time.

He cleaned. He thought. Each new dish restarted the seemingly endless cycle.

Leo, retiring. A coincidence, it was only a coincidence, but what had tipped the balance? The fluttering of Fate's wings created breezes that blew into hurricanes: Katsuki's return, if rumors were to be believed, stemmed from an accidental viral video. Leo's decision might have fallen the other way if he'd been the one standing under the podium lights… or if Otabek had remained hot on his heels, chasing but never catching up, and another claimed the victory of bronze.

Otabek rinsed the mug and set it aside to dry, shaking his head to dislodge the clinging questions. He picked up a plate.

"I said I'd wash them later."

He turned to see Gulshat, still in pajamas, standing by the fridge with messy hair and another pair of dirty mugs. When he glanced at the microwave clock – midafternoon – she let out an annoyed huff of breath.

"It's fine," he told her with only the hint of a lie on his tongue, and dropped a handful of silverware into the water to soak. "I felt like it."

The water had cooled to a tepid lukewarm; the few lingering soap bubbles cast iridescent rainbows over the cloudy surface. The whole thing seemed rather pointless. In a day, two days, a week, the dishes will have piled up again. Otabek could refill the sink and pour in more soap, but in the end, he'd be left with dirty plates and grey water.

If the end was the same, the only reason to continue was the means, the process, the cycle itself. Clean and use and clean again. From strangers to friends to lovers to…

"Okay, for fuck's sake, I'll do it now," Gulshat grumbled. "Go mope somewhere else before I drown you and put myself out of your misery."

"I'm not moping," retorted Otabek, stung. "I'm cleaning _your_ mess."

"Thanks for your sacrifice, Beka, but don't pretend you haven't been feeling sorry for yourself since you got home because your life isn't perfect," she snapped back. "Oh no, you're worried your relationship might eventually have trouble, but you won't actually talk to Yuri about it, because that would be _doing_ something and that's just not your style. Sorry I can't be your personal cheerleader today."

The words stung like insect bites, tiny and sharp and completely impossible to ignore. Otabek opened his mouth, ready to slap them away, but his sister's face was tipped towards the ceiling as she plunged her hands into the dishwater. He thought of his parents' firm belief that everything was fine as long as they could keep pretending that it was, and he thought of Yuri, arguing around the point like he was prodding a bruise, close, closer, close enough to ache but not to wound. Of Yuri, slamming the door behind him as he left Otabek in the bare apartment, alone but for stacks of boxes and the heavy, acrid scent of fresh paint.

"What's wrong?" Otabek asked. Gulshat turned away from him, and his doubt faded. "Gulshat. What happened?"

She didn't turn to face him. Her voice was flat and steady, as Gulshat's expressive tones never were. "Berik and I broke up."

"When?" Otabek's own heart dropped.

"Thursday," she replied, and laughed humorlessly. "Yeah, you didn't know. I spent that night getting wasted with Makpal, then got home from work on Friday and slept off the hangover. You were asleep by the time I woke up. Then I went back to bed at, like, six this morning."

"I'm sorry," Otabek said, floundering. "Do you-"

"Want to talk?" She sighed. "Fuck no, Beka. Kinda want to drink, kinda want to fight someone, kinda want to sleep."

If it were him, he'd be on the ice right now, chasing the moment when his muscles loosened and the crushing weight on his lungs lifted, but Gulshat didn't skate. "We could go for a run?"

She spun on her heel. "Beka, if you _ever_ suggest cardio or any other disgustingly healthy coping mechanism again, I'm disowning you." Her eyes were rimmed with pink, but one corner of her mouth curled upwards. "Also, if you talk about Yuri right now."

"Fair." Otabek grimaced. "Gratuitously violent video games and junk food?"

Crimson blood spattered across the screen as Gulshat cackled, and Otabek winced. Taimas, who was lying across Otabek's feet, pricked his ears at the gory sound effects accompanying Otabek's unbroken streak of brutal defeats.

The story slowly came out as Gulshat pummeled his character on-screen.

Berik had been offered a job in Beijing – not the temporary position he'd applied for, but the start of a career. He accepted. He asked Gulshat to move to China with him. She refused.

"We'd only been dating for a _year,_ we hadn't even seriously talked about moving in together!" Gulshat hissed as Otabek managed to land a lucky hit. "Hey, fuck you. He didn't even tell me before saying yes, he just did it. He'd known for _weeks._ Then he had the fucking nerve to tell me that if I didn't love him enough to compromise, we wouldn't have worked out anyway."

"And he's still here for another month?"

"Yep." She sneered. "As far as the gang knows, we're 'ending it on good terms' and 'staying friends.' Most of them wouldn't choose sides, but I really can't deal with that shitshow on top of everything else so I agreed."

"Makpal knows?"

"She knows," Gulshat confirmed. "She's running interference, she'll let me know when he's there so I can skive off. And stop me from killing anyone at the goodbye party."

Otabek sighed to himself. "So you're going to avoid all your friends for a month so you don't see him?"

"If you have a better plan, I'd love to hear it," she snapped. "The guys would lock us in a room and try to make us talk it out, the salt squad would decide to hate him on principle, and everyone else would try to avoid the subject entirely and either choose sides or avoid both of us. It's not worth it. I just want him to fuck off so we can be done with it."

"Yeah," Otabek said softly. "It just… it's a bad time for you to be alone." Yuri. Saint Petersburg. Gulshat, left behind with the same dark whirlpool of thoughts that he knew so well. "Do you want to come to Russia with me?"

"Ugh. No offense, Beka, but I'd rather go to mosque with Dad every day than third-wheel you two. Don't worry about it. It's not your problem."

Otabek frowned. "You stayed there for me, when- it made it easier."

"Go see your fucking boyfriend, you've been pining over him for months and it made me sick," she told him. "Or…"

"Or?"

"You could ask Yuri to come here instead. He's fun, and I'd throw you two out when you got annoying." She snickered. "I could also wind him up and send him after Berik. Now _that_ would be glorious."

"Look, you can't use my boyfriend as a tool of vengeance," said Otabek, laughing. "You're sure you'd be fine with that?"

"Yeah, sure," she replied.

On the television screen, Otabek's character gurgled through another gruesome death.

 **:: :: ::**

Yuri's visit was planned.

 _I have to be back before the seventh to prep for Euros._

Then it was pared down to five, four, three days.

 _That fucking footwork in my free skate needs to go die in a fire._

"Just go over there, Beka, seriously," Gulshat insisted. "I don't need a babysitter."

"I'll see," Otabek replied, but what he meant was _I promised._ When he thought about it, he thought about finding his family again nearly a year after returning to Almaty. He thought about the fire that had always burned in his sister's eyes, an inch and an accident away from setting her aflame.

And he remembered the constant battle for his time, the struggle of seeking to divide himself between _Timur skating family school friends,_ the haunting suspicion that only one could come first. That he would have to _choose_ who came first.

That he would make the wrong choice and finish the day with nothing more than empty hands and burned bridges.

It was a bitter relief when Yuri was the one to close that door.

 _Grandpa's back flared. I'm gonna stay in Moscow for the rest of the holiday._

"Is he okay?"

Yuri sighed, and his breath whispered against Otabek's ear even with so much distance between them. "Yeah, basically. It's a muscle spasm. He won't be able to move around well for a few days."

"That's good. Better, I mean," said Otabek, hearing himself trip over his thoughts. Yuri's voice was gentle when he spoke about his grandfather, soft behind its characteristic gilding of sarcasm and anger, and shone like the sun. Its light lit upon the leaves of the tiny plant in Otabek's heart, the one he'd christened _love_ and tried to set aside, coaxing it into bloom. "Tell him I said hello."

"Tell him you've been arrested for public intoxication and disorderly conduct, got it," replied Yuri, snickering – it had become his favorite joke since Otabek, struck with a sudden jolt of concern immediately before meeting Nikolai, had asked if his leather jacket and motorcycle might make a bad impression. Yuri had laughed himself hoarse and gleefully repeated the question to his grandfather, who now referred to Otabek as _'Yura's nice young delinquent friend.'_

"We'll Skype," Otabek promised, though his throat tightened with a sudden pressing want and he resented each atom that separated them. "I-" he breathed, unsure of how the truth could be captured in three syllables, "love you."

"Dumbass, of course we'll Skype," said Yuri, and it was tinged with the feather-soft touch of earlier. "I love you."

When the call ended at last, Otabek slipped his phone back into his pocket and took a moment to pull himself back to his Almaty apartment, back from the in-between space their voices had shared.

 _That_ was Yuri, he decided, and it was like putting a name to something he'd known his entire life. Yuri was Yuri, with a passion and a determination that defied all compromise, and he devoted himself to each action as fully as a mountain was bound to the earth. Yuri had no patience for hesitating, for repercussions: if they stood between him and his goal, he'd bear their blows without flinching. When skating demanded his life, Yuri gave it his soul. When faced with a choice between Nikolai and Otabek, he chose without pause and left no room for doubt.

Otabek had believed that was why they were the same. Now, he knew that he was wrong.

That was how they were different.

 **:: :: ::**

 _Who am I supposed to be?_

In Kazakhstan, a hero – but Otabek couldn't shake the feeling that he was riding under a false pennant.

In the skating world, a competitor – the underdog, the dark horse, interesting to watch but never a serious threat.

For his parents, he was dutiful and determined to make the most of what they'd given him, to make them proud. For his sister, he was there like she was there, confused and struggling but refusing to give up and step away.

And Otabek… He was the fulcrum, the pivot, the balance that couldn't find equilibrium, couldn't find _himself._

And then, there was Yuri. Otabek had never before wanted his luck to hold so badly, to be an eternal silver to Yuri's gold, a night to Yuri's sunset, one step behind but close enough to touch.

He had never before wanted to hold victory so badly, to turn to Yuri as an equal, to reach for him without his luck hanging between them, to _know._ To know who he was. To know which version Yuri loved – the boy or the charm. Otabek may be gold, but gold was something to hold and cherish for what it meant rather than what it was, and every reflection in its shimmering surface was warped and shallow.

Otabek's luck had always been a fact, just as it had always been a fact that the sun would rise in the morning. He was the rabbit's foot and the footless rabbit, the horseshoe nailed to a door, the four-leaf clover plucked from the earth to wither. When he challenged it, he lost, because victory came at a price.

But now, he couldn't find the balance, and he couldn't find himself. The tightness in Otabek's chest turned to biting, clawing acid as his certainty turned to stone.

Time blurred as Otabek threw himself into his training. At first, his coach tried to order him off the ice, but Otabek was no longer running away from something inside himself. He was running towards it. Ali must have sensed the change, because he began to stay a little later each evening, discussing jumps and step sequences and tweaks with the fervor of a shark that's scented blood in the water.

The first time Otabek had tried to jump, he was so young that the memory only remained as a story recited in his mother's voice. He'd feared falling and hitting the ice so much that his skates refused to leave it, and when they finally did, his own terror pulled him down and he tripped.

 _"You sat there looking at your knee, and then at your hand, and we all thought you were going to cry. But then, you made a tiny fist, punched the ice, and stood back up. After that, you never hesitated, and by the end of class you had enough bruises that your father almost called the teacher to complain. But you told him it didn't matter that you fell, and you showed him the bruise on your hand – you didn't hit the ice because you were angry, you said, but because you were scared and you didn't want to be. After that, you knew what it felt like, and you weren't afraid, and you flew no matter how many times you fell."_

He couldn't be loved for his luck, not if he was to be loved for himself, and he couldn't hover between one and the other.

He had to find out.

He had to win.

And for that, he might lose.

 **:: :: ::**

Worlds came upon him as inexorably as the tide flowing in.

Otabek and Ali met up with Yuri in Sheremetyevo – he'd spent a day in Moscow visiting his grandfather, a concession he'd either argued or bribed Yakov into accepting, and they would be on the same flights to Detroit.

Otabek smiled as Yuri found them at the gate and yanked him into a tight hug, even when the point of Yuri's shoulder hit him in the throat and he coughed. It was easy to fall back into the rhythm they'd built over the past three years, and absurd to separate that time from the last three months. If Otabek believed in luck, he had to believe in fate, and he couldn't help but trace the path they'd been unknowingly careening down since Barcelona.

With Yuri warm in his arms, it was easy to forget about his luck for a moment. When Yuri stepped back to set down his duffel bag, it was impossible to forget.

"Switch seats with me," Yuri demanded, turning to Ali. "You're next to Otabek."

"I'll think about it," replied Ali. He flicked a teasing look towards Otabek as Yuri bristled.

"I'm-" Yuri snarled, then paused. His green eyes grew wide and his mouth pursed into a pout. "I have a window seat."

"Oh. Well, I prefer the aisle."

"It's only to Amsterdam!"

On the first flight, they were barely off the ground when Yuri yawned and prodded Otabek's ribs.

"Lean back, Beka," he mumbled. Otabek obliged, and Yuri stretched like a cat before shoving the tiny, staticky pillow into the crook of Otabek's neck and falling asleep.

On the second flight, Otabek dozed and dreamed; the rumbling, carpeted floor dropped away beneath his feat, and though he clung to the seat, he scrabbled without purchase and he slipped down, down, down through the hole and into the black depths of the ocean far below. As he fell, Yuri bent over to meet his eyes, and held out his hand – a hand that held a shining golden disc and Otabek reached, stretched, grasping for Yuri's fingers but finding only air and cold metal.

He fell, clutching the medal, and Yuri's eyes grew hard and distant.

 _You chose this._

Otabek woke as the water closed around him. Yuri's grin was warm and close.

"I think they're getting out the food," said Yuri, craning to peer over the seats. "Let's see if they manage to poison us before the competition this time. Is this breakfast or dinner?"

"Not sure," replied Otabek with a yawn. He leaned over to rest his forehead on Yuri's shoulder, waiting for the lurch of freefall to leave his stomach. He wondered if Icarus had doubted that his wings would lift him – the podium was no closer than it had ever been – and if it hadn't been hubris but fear of the ocean's churning depths that drove him to chase the distant sun. He wondered if Yuri would sit next to him on the flight home.

 **:: :: ::**

The short program was achingly familiar, each step engraved on Otabek's mind more deeply than the grooves his skates bit into the ice. His fear faded into fatigue as beads of sweat formed on his scalp, and the fatigue mellowed into the claustrophobic comfort of routine. Familiar, but for the silence where his call of good luck would ring out across the rink. Yuri's eyes asked a question, and Otabek turned away before he could answer.

He ended the day in second place. Yuri was ahead of him, and Otabek didn't look to see who was behind – it was another risk, another cliff to fall over. The evening was spent with Yuri, split between exploring their corner of the city and experimenting with the kisses that were so easily stymied by distance.

On the day of the free skate, Otabek woke with tension humming through his body and crackling over his skin like sparks. The air felt different, and he thought that maybe he'd always had his wings of wax and feathers, but had been too afraid of flight to feel their touch along his spine. Yuri had been soaring since the day Otabek saw him across the ballet studio, and it was time to meet him in the air, at least for a moment, before the water weighed him down or the sun's kiss bestowed a meaningless victory.

He stepped onto the ice, and he flew.

 **:: :: ::**

The lights were hot against Otabek's skin, and he forced his hands to stay still around the bouquet of flowers in his grip instead of reaching up to shade his eyes. The heat trickled down his face, tugging at the foundation smeared across his cheeks.

Yuri stood beside him – arranged as they were on the podium, they were the same height – and the silver gleamed moon-bright against the starry sky of flashbulbs flickering from the faceless audience. When Otabek glanced over, Yuri's face was as smooth as marble, cool and untouchable.

Yuri turned to him as they came back down to the frozen earth, but his words were lost in the heavy air. Before Otabek could catch his pounding heart and lean in, they were dragged apart by the relentless press of reporters and coaches and well-wishers.

In the end, Otabek escaped to his hotel room alone – alone, but for the tiny, gleaming sun hanging from a ribbon around his neck.

 **:: :: ::**

"How long do I have to stay at the banquet?" Otabek asked, resisting the urge to drop his phone into the trash. Ali grumbled back at him, but his tone was fond. "No, I'll be there, I just don't- I don't know how much of it I can get through tonight."

Ali's voice shifted, softened.

"No, it's not that, I'm fine," Otabek reassured him. He hoped he was telling the truth, and that the razor-sharp emotion biting into his mind was anticipation and not finality. "I'll let you know later, then." A knock on the door echoed through the room, through his chest, and Otabek hung up the phone.

Yuri opened it and stepped inside before Otabek could move.

"You left early," he said, and Otabek wished he could read the lines of Yuri's face.

"It was… the press has never paid that much attention to me before," Otabek murmured in reply. "I didn't want to stay longer than I had to."

Yuri snorted. "Comes with the medal, dumbass, of course they're paying attention to you." He moved forward and caught Otabek's wrist in a slim, wiry, gentle grip. "I can't believe you left me behind out there."

"Pirate code?"

"Fuck you, Beka, I can't tease you about that stupid pirate costume if you make all the pirate jokes first." Yuri pulled him in, pulled them together, until Otabek could feel the heat rising from Yuri's skin. "You did… that was amazing."

"I- thanks." He was no longer a step behind, but were they still walking together? "Thank you."

"You deserved gold," Yuri whispered. "I don't like losing, but I'm glad you won. I don't know- when I lose, it's always because I wasn't good enough, not because someone else was better. But now. I don't- you were better. You were amazing."

"It's okay if you're mad," Otabek said, forcing the words past his lips. "At me."

"The fuck? I'm not mad." Yuri looped his arms around Otabek's waist. "I'm trying to congratulate you, moron."

Otabek let himself fall into the kiss. He wasn't worried about hitting the ground, about burning above the clouds, about being swallowed by the sea's pitiless waves. He set his luck aside, and peeled it from his skin, and stood before Yuri as himself – as nothing more, and nothing less.

" _Now_ you look happy about it, Beka," Yuri told him with a laugh. "Finally caught up with you?"

Otabek smiled.

"I'm lucky, Yura."


End file.
